




. N c ^ V t a * ' s a\ X 
** ** X 


V I 8 


& * 

/ 7 o * v ’ *; v 

% ?j> G°V' 

'•bo' -.'j 

° $ \ '*£§Pv /%, '?fc- [° \'A 

' V ^ 41 ^ ^ -f 5 r A ^ /I r* 

* ^W% « <!« \V ♦ A, 0 ^ 




* *»' A « ^ <£* 

f t ; •“ ^ ’V 

•*> > 'S>\ O - £ 

s . 

V. 7 a a s . ^ 

* •# ' 

,/• 1 «\ “V 




Cp 

y ^ •„ 

■ \ O / n . ■* »0 ’ ■** // 

' ,»' l **,- / b J 

*S V v , ^ 7 


' v- V s 
-<* 1 

** ,vt 

*> fej 


•** yv 

0 o' 


* x0 <3* 

i> v,\ 

/ w 

ftfeK ; 

.H -TV 



N \ r 7 

v I r 

' Jr L.,%. '* ’ ««’ , .„ 

►^\' S EL** Cy V * 

Or 



v_ » 0 1 

\ 

1 A * 


< 

* / 


r - •>> 

'V* 


<o J *©, I 

.0' s\V'* C‘ 

-fr AttSfifek- <* *P 
* j^Smcrm * < 





4 ^ >- ^ 

- Wi ^ ^ * 

«*V *-* w rp 

,,v o*V _ 

0 <fi ■> ^ifl^. ' ’tr. ,'<'■ * fCCV^S ?A, 














s s Z 



' * * s A . I m 0 * »* aG C •'/ 

V w -a 

*. 0< 3* - fgjp|>^‘ , s =’ > l ’ r d. ' Z%¥]& ’ 

. v .. ,%. y> 0 no’’ .*«•• ^‘•^‘',// C o/% 

I 'If^, ■ 

■ ^ v-* >. 40 c-, * „*n 

* x - *■• > ' R ^- - ^ <a « 

<> v 

\ A CX O 

S /\ O / 

r CT . c 

0 A* 

O f 



\’ '♦- 


Y- 

V. , 




*>• jk* 


0 * k 



\ 



^ ^ " 

/ •* C 

■/ i 1 J 'M?' "V 

L ' '' 

i} ' ^ 

\ 

* g 

«A > 



A* 


'* ' ^°\s NO 

A-> V * C* 


* 4^ V ^ , V -s, 

> c#- * ^ov' v *v * 

/ft * sS A A vi» ^ y 0*x* <0 V < -V, s v A 

A' . « v 1 8 « ^ r\T • O N c. <<> J * * s A\ 

’* / \.% 7 r~'V 

> H 1 .0^ s s V ' *■ <c 




* <s 

A* ^ 

'0 * v * *6 

,0' c 0 0 . 

0 * r^Wy 

<•. - a' <Y«S& 


* 9 

V v ' * ^ ° / "> * * 1 '" / . 

V- A v *^W\' ■"■/' % $ * 





aV" 'V o 

<\ 'Os'* A O, % 0 * . * 

<S> * * jA N ,1"* ? o ,v 

J* .X v ' -» ^3 0° 

'"oo^ 



x 0o. 

AT ^A//J,, „, •> V % 'i ' O , 

rf- ‘ TL tl '-W V ^ / ' ik.'J , ' > k' 

^ *■ 4 - ; \ * % " • o r b \ , ' f^ * 

1 *^, "> 81 . 9 * s s 1 ;;; ^ %. 0 N V ' ^ 

’ ° ^ w ^ .^ x - 

a v ^ 

i\ x ^ - -U/ «»XK . ^ ^ 

* -V 






> SJa Y 0 A 


c s <<^ 

** t> l " 

a\ . i n ?7 * 0 a K * 

.# >*’ '% % C< 

iX * 0i(r2fc. * . 0 A 

--aX 




^ . >V“ i K , ■: ' 'o o' 

0O - *TOi>o* „H ^ *0^ 

V ri- i r -Cf ■<■ “ ^ A 

o x -0 J 

9 1 ' 9^ s s * • / 

a'Js' ^ , 























TALES 


«REAT ST. BERNARD 



IN TWO VOLUMES. 

VOL,. I. 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 

THE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 


PRINTED BY J. J. HARTER. 

OLD £Y COLLINS AND HANNAY, COLLINS AND CO., G. AND C. Citfc 
YUX, O. A. ROORBACH, E. BLISS, W. B. GILLEY, A. T. GOODRICH, 
W. BURGESS, JR. N. B. HOLMES, AND C. S. FRANCIS j~~PIIlIiADf < 
f'Hri, CARf-.Y, LEA, AND CAREY, AND JOHN GRIOO. 

1829. 










V ( A' 


i fc • *■ *4 'k k 



.»-< » 


.♦v T'4 






To those who may take the trouble of reading these Tales, ami may 
be perplexed by their slight allu»ions to Alpine scenery; the Author 
would recommend a glance at Mr. Rrockedon’s “ Passes of the Alps,” 
a work of no less fidelity than graphic skill and beauty. 

He also wishes to mention that the briefer Tales, towards the close of 
these volumes, have already appeared in a more hasty shape in some 
scattered publications. 















1 


\ 


T A L E S 

OF THE 

GREAT ST. BERNARD. 


L\ the summer of 1825, after rambling for some months 
through the delicious country that holds the Lake of Ge¬ 
neva in its bosom, like the sculpture of one of our rich 
old frames, a circle of fruit, flowers, shepherdesses and 
their sheep, all in glorious gilding round a huge mirror, 1 
made my lingering way to the Alps. 

The choice of passes lay before me ; and I chose the 
Great St. Bernard as the least frequented by 114 gentlemen 
who travel for a week,'’ as leading deepest into the heart 
of the mountains, and, not least, as connected with the 
most glittering fragment of modern history. 

Travelling has, like every thing else, its troubles ; but 
it has lessons too. Its wisdom to me was, to make no 
delay for second thoughts, and to communicate my pro¬ 
ject to no living thing. The first only wastes time ; the 
latter only encumbers the traveller with commissions or 
company. I thus escaped orders for the purchase ot 
coral-beads, amulets from the countless shrines ot Our 
Lady, and Lombard poodles. 1 escaped the much more 
formidable burden of a celebrated hunter alter the sub¬ 
lime, who had publicly and flatteringly declared that. 
*• with a man of my taste,” he would be content to roam 
Mount Blanc for a year together—of a geologist, who, 
loaded with a whole camel’s weight of chemistry, would 
have marched with me hammer in hand to the ends of the 
earth ; and finally, and it is not without a blusii that 1 say 
it—of a coterie of six pretty girls of the very first London 
world, who, with the new ardour of their sex, and the 
true English reliance on the gallantry of other countries, 
had sallied out under the sole wing of their own virtues, 







4 


THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 


to explore the native soil of romance, Rousseau, and the 
Ranz de vache. 

With what pang of heart I thus left behind me enthu¬ 
siasm, science, and beauty, I must not now venture to de¬ 
scribe. But the sacrifice was made. I sighed a secret 
and a long farewell to blue lake, brown vineyard, and, as 
1 hoped, the face of my countrymen, and with a dog, a 
valet, and a guide, set off for Jiartigny, on ‘ l a burning 
day on the first of September.” 

The antiquarians and monks have been equally busy in 
this route, and there is scarcely a rock unhonoured by a 
lapidary record or a legend of the church. The antiqua¬ 
rian boldly points out the identical spot where the lieute¬ 
nant of the “ immortal Julius” smote the half naked 
tribes of the Alps, built cities, and compelled the robber- 
savages to learn the more civilized arts of plunder that dis¬ 
tinguished their masters. The monk has his more pictur¬ 
esque tales of castles built bv submissive demons, bodies 
walking without their heads, and friars impervious to pas¬ 
sion, ambition, and gold. The curiosity to the traveller 
whose faith may not be vigorous enough for the monk or 
the antiquarian, is in the perfect representation of African 
building and Arabian manners to be found in every village 
of his route. The houses are such as would not seem 
strange to a Hottentot fresh from his krall, nor the system 
of pilfering the stranger much to be surpassed from the 
Euphrates to the heads of Babel mandel. 

From the valley in which the “ arrowy Rhone” lies glit¬ 
tering like the arrow before it takes its flight, the road 
winds through a broken and rude country, but striking fol¬ 
ds noble views of the distant landscape. The evening 
found me sitting on a knoll above Martigny, luxuriating 
in the fresh air, of itself an unspeakable luxury after the 
merciless scorching of a Swiss day, and delighting my 
eye with its last vision of the great Alpine amphitheatre. 
The mountain air is well known to give a vigorous and 
pronounced colour to the landscape, and an artist of the 
pen or pencil might here set up his tent, and worship the 
Saint Gothard, with its crest in the sky, dyed blood-red, 
as if the French and Russians were still battling among 
ts snows, a gigantic altar to human folly, covered with 




THE OREAT ST. BERNARD. 


5 


the blood of fools. Down the valley, and far beyond, I 
gazed on a glorious expanse of pictured country, sur¬ 
mounted by the range of the Jura lifting its unnumbered 
pinnacles, gold-tipt, like a city of cathedrals. And be¬ 
fore me, robed with a cloud of the purest purple, above 
which shone its forehead of perpetual snow, rose the 
mountain of the Great St. Bernard. Here my compari¬ 
sons failed, and I was forced to be satisfied with the 
simple grandeur of this sovereign of the landscape. My 
valet was an Italian, and of course had but one emblem 
for greatness. He said that u it put him in mind of the 
pope surrounded by the cardinals.” The cluster of 
snowy peaks, and the scarlet and purple vestures that 
clothed their sides, made the similitude not worse than 
those that find their way into many a journal; and I pru¬ 
dently acquiesced in my valet’s discovery. 

From Bourg and Bouvernier, villages built on the un¬ 
questionable plan of their most barbarian forefathers, I 
wound my way along the edge of the rough and roaring 
Drance, through the wreck of hill, forest, and valley, 
wrought by the inundation of 1818, when the river, 
checked in its course by an avalanche in the hills above, 
swelled into a lake, and at length bursting its icy barrier, 
thundered down upon the country below. To this scene 
of ruin succeeded the often praised and pleasant path 
through the vale of Entremont, a long and bright vision 
of fields covered with cattle and cultivation. Thus far 
the lovers of their ease come in the little cars of the 
country, and the more heroic on foot. But the mountain 
here prohibits the “ char the pedestrian generally has 
had enough of glory; and, but for the mules that await 
them, many a tourist would check his course on this spot, 
and leave the Great St. Bernard to the smuggler, the 
pedlar, and the monk. 

At the little village of St. Pierre the true Alps begin ; 
and an old gate, leading to an oid bridge over a ravine 
that would stop the march of an army, let me in to the 
wonders of the mountain world—forests wild and endless, 
looking the true children of tne storm—solitary cascades, 
darting down hills of naked rock—craggy paths, too 
rouo'h and narrow for any tread but that of the mule— and 

X* 


THE GREAT ST. BERXARB. 


t> 

long vistas of abrupt hills sullen coloured, as if the storm 
had impressed them with its own dye, and guiding the eye 
to the Mount Velan, towering above the pass of the con¬ 
vent. From this village ascends the region of the ava¬ 
lanches, marked by the ruins of the plain of Prou, and the 
still more expressive emblems of the Chalets for the re¬ 
ception of the dead, and of the unfortunates caught in 
■ he tempests. A narrow plateau of snow, which even 
lugust does not always dissolve—a bridge over the tor- 
rent—and a brief mule-path once passed—the Hospice 
is seen, like a windowed ro^k, crouching under the central 
hills of the Great St. Bernard. 

As 1 was under no English necessity of flying through 
the country, like a fugitive from the law, I proposed to 
take up my quarters at the convent for a few days ; and 1 
know no pleasanter place where a man disposed to take 
the world as it goes could spend his time, at least until 
winter drove him from his aery. He has the variety of a 
iarge household without the bustle of an inn ; the cheer¬ 
fulness of a table d’hote free from the vulgarity of the 
travelling m b that beset Switzerland ; and the society of 
a body of gentlemen, who will not make it the price of 
their friendship to run away with your daughter, play you 
out of your estate, or shoot you if you demur to either. 

If I could be a summer monk, and change my vows, 
like my clothes, with the winter, I know no fraternity 
that offers stronger temptations than the Augustins of the 
Saint Bernard. To escape the hustle of the world, yet 
be in the world ; to have moving before our eyes an easy 
succession of society- a constant living phantasmagoria, 
often highly piquant, and always amusing; to indulge in 
literature, without the toils of authorship, the teazing of 
dilettanti, or the agonies of exulting criticism ; to ramble 
over a sun-clad kingdom of mountains, with the kingship 
undisputed among* all the royal and heroic stragglers for a 
grave ten thousand feet below ; to “ sit on rocks, and muse 
o’er flood and fell ; 5> to turn painter, poet, pilgrim, and 
dreamer, at one’s own discretion, and without having the 
fear of living man before our eyes ; and to do all this°with 
die saving and singular consciousness that we are doing 
•iorne good m our vocation, that humanity is the better fbi 






THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 7 

us, and that our place would be missed among mankind— 
Utopia might grow pale to the beatitudes of the little 
republic under the protection of St. Augustin, and the 
shadow of Mount Velan, existente (estate. 

But summer is unfortunately a rare guest, and its visit 
one of the shortest possible duration. The sunshine that 
subdues the plain, with the fidelity of a wife, is, at the 
famous Hospice, capricious as a first love. I had entered 
its walls on a day made in the prodigality of the finest 
season of the year. The snowy scalps of the hills were 
interspersed with stripes of verdure that had seen the light 
for the first time within memory : the bee, that more 
than all creation beside gives assurance of summer to 
my ear, was roaming and humming away among the 
thistle-down and mosses that even the Alpine frost is not 
always able to kill. 1 could imagine in the air that passed 
in slight gusts from time to time, the odours of the Italian 
flowers. I lingered long at the gate of the convent, 
enjoying the magnificent serenity of the sky, the air, and 
the hills ; and felt no trivial reluctance at abandoning so 
alluring a contemplation for a corridor crowded with ser¬ 
vants, and a chamber imbedded in a wall as thick as if it 
had to stand a siege. Even the indulgence of the convent 
table could not wean me from the conviction that I could 
Iiave got through my travel pleasantly enough, though the 
Hospice had, like the Santa Casa, been transported on 
the backs of angels to some new Loretto, “ many a league 
and far.” 

But I had not been two hours under its roof before a 
burst of wind, that reminded rne of nothing but the roar 
of Niagara, shot down the side of Mont Velan ; stripped 
,) away the gathered snow of half a century in an immense 
. sheet, and hurled it full upon the convent. All was in 
instant commotion within. The table was deserted by 
the chief part of the brotherhood, who hurried to see that * 
the casements and doors were made secure. The ground- 
■ floor of the building, which is occupied with stables, and 
storehouses for wood and the other supplies of the con¬ 
vent, was a scene of immediate confusion, from the 
crowding in of the menials and peasantry. I ventured 
one glance from my window. Summer was gone at 





THE GBEAT ST. BEBNABD. 


a 

* 

once ; and u the winter wild” was come in its stead. 
The sun was blotted out of the heavens: snow in every 
shape that it could be flung into by the most furious wind, 
whirlpool, drift, and hill, flashed and swept along. Before 
evening it was fourteen feet high in front of the Hospice. 
We could keep our fingers from being icicles only bv 
thrusting them almost into the blazing wood fires ; the 
bursts of wind shook the walls like cannon shot; and 1 
made a solemn recantation of all my raptures on the life 
of an Augustin of St. Bernard. 

As the night fell, the storm lulled at intervals, and I 
listened with anxiety to the cries and noises that announced 
the danger of travellers surprised in the storm. The 
fineness of the season had tempted many to cross the 
mountain without much precaution against the change, 
and the sounds of horns, bellSi arid the barking of the dogs 
as the strangers arrived, kept me long awake. By morning 
the convent was full; the world was turned to universal 
snow ; the monks came down girded for their winter 
excursions ; the domestics were busy equipping the dogs ; 
fires blazed, cauldrons smoked; every stranger was 
pelissed and furred up to the chin, and the whole scene 
might have passed for a Lapland carnival. But the Hos¬ 
pice is provided for such casualties ; and after a little un¬ 
avoidable tumult, all its new inhabitants were attended to ' 
with much more than the civility of a continental inn, and 
with infinitely less than its discomfort. The gentlemen 
adjourned to the reading room, where they found books 
and papers, which probably seldom passed the Italian 
frontier. The ladies turned over the port-folios of prints, 
many of which are the donations of strangers who had been 
indebted to the hospitality of the place ; or amused them¬ 
selves at the piano in the drawing-room, for music is there 
above the flight of the lark ; or pored over the shelves to 
plunge their souls in some “ flattering tale” of hope and 
love, orange groves, and chevaliers plumed, capped, and 
guitarred into irresistible captivation. The scientific 
manipulated the ingenious collection of the mountain 
minerals made by the brotherhood. Haifa dozen herbals 
from the adjoining regions lay open for the botanist; a 
finely bound and decorated album, that owed obligations 











THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 9 

to every art but the art of poetry, lay open for the plea¬ 
santries, the memorials, and the wonderings of every 
body ; and for those who loved sleep best there were 
eighty beds. 

VV ith such u appliances and means to boot,” vve had 
no great right to complain even of the sudden stoppage 
that prevented us from pouring down upon Italy or 
Switzerland as our course might be. The politeness of 
the brotherhood is proverbial ; their dinners were by no 
means unworthy of our approbation, even had more of us 
graduated at the Rocher de Cancale ; their wine was 
good, and their conversation was better. Some of them 
were men of fine tastes, not the less popular with our 
ladies for being developed in fine countenances, just 
earthly enough to tell the tender a tale of disappointed 
feelings, and just sallow and saintly enough to sublimate 
the tale into the proper degree of spirituality. Some of 
them had been military, and after figuring at half the 
courts of Europe u the glass of fashion and the mould of 
form” to a generation of noble imitators, had decided that 
all was vanity, abandoned the delusions of love and war, 
and fled to a retreat where neither mistress nor monarch 
could molest them more ; and even the oi 7roXXoi were per¬ 
sons of considerable information, as might be expected 
from their literary means, stimulated and kept in action 
by the constant influx of strangers from every cultivated 
portion and stirring scene of the world. 

All went on well for a few days ; but the storm still 
raged, or paused only to gather in fresh gusts of tremen¬ 
dous violence, and heap up our doorways and casements 
with higher mounds of snow. Winter, merciless in this 
his own land, had completely set in, and many a gentle 
murmur at length began to arise from the gentler sex at 
the recollection, that while they were shut up like the 
princess of the fairy tale in this palace of ice, the world 
on both sides of them was redolent of joy and autumn ; 
that a twelve hours’ drive would take them into the centre 
of a flowery paradise ; and that no power short of magic 
could carry them through those twelve hours. The men 
bore their calamity much worse, as usual, and many an 
ejaculation both ioud and deep was mingled with the 





THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. 


It) 

clouds from the Meershaum of German, Russ, and Pole. 
The Frenchman grew weary of his tabatiere, and even ot 
the sound of his own voice. Pleasantry died a slow but 
a certain death. The piano was touched with a rarer 
and a more reluctant finger. The wits had exhausted 
their epigrams, and the philosophers felt the difficulty ol 
dragging out the day. 

Disclaiming for myself the honours of any title above 
that of a mere rambler, the various shapes in which the 
general misfortune worked upon the individual sufferer 
were to me a new source of amusement. But among the 
crowd for whom all the bounties of earth and heaven 
seemed to have been cancelled by a shower of snow, I 
could discover hut one man of my own school. 

I was struck by his countenance of easy good humour, 
yet mixed with lines of strong thought. The face was 
thoroughly English, and was therefore rational and manly ; 
it might have been even handsome in its early day ; but from 
fifty to sixty years had passed over it, and left the traces 
of their march. In our casual intercourse we fell into 
some exchanges of opinion that made us gradually inti¬ 
mate, and he gave the highest English proof of civility 
by makir g me known to Ins lady and daughters. On some 
allusion of mine to those sources of happiness, and inci¬ 
dentally hinting mv susprise at the taste of my fortunate 
countrymen for living in every country but their own— 

u Sir, you must not include me among the number of 
voluntary fugitives,” said my new friend with a smile ; “ 1 
have run away from England, riot through taste, but 
through absolute compulsion. I was too lucky, too im¬ 
portant, and too rich, to be able to live at home ; so I am 
come abroad to be nobody, to be good for nothing, and 

to be happy.” f fitir . n 

I shook my head at the paradox. 

“ You cannot comprehend this,” said he. “ Well, 
then, that you mav believe I am neither the man in 
the iron mask, nor the writer of Junius, I must let you 
into the facts of the brief. Hear the case, and you will 
aco^it me.” 


/ 


[> ' ■ : . \ ' ■ 

THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 

THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


1 # \ , v 

CHAPTER I. 

I ■ 

I was bred to the bar, and practised in Westminster 
Hall for some years with what was considered remarkable 
success in the profession ; for, at the end of my fifth year, 
I w T as neither in debt nor in despair, and was enabled, 
with the profits of my practice, actually to purchase a new 
wig and gown. The novelty of being able to produce 
such proofs of my. talents while it excited the envy of nine- 
tenths of my competitors, attracted to me the smiles of 
some of those old practitioners who Jtnew every step of 
the road to triumph ; and more than one solicitor hinted 
at the advantage of securing his services in clerkships and 
so forth, when in the fulness of my honours I should be on 
the Bench. 

The wisest of us all are sometimes dreamers, and I will 
own that I thought those solicitors by much the most 
sagacious of their profession. To sit on hot pillows nine 
i hours a day for nine months of the year, in air saturated 
with law and lawyers, to hear no sound from one end of life 
to the other but the brawling of barristers, witnesses, and 
culprits—and to secure a splendid reversion of gout, with 
my whole soul immersed in the revilings and rogueries of 
every offender that justice could fish up from the great 
! sewer of English iniquity, rose before my eyes with the 
brightness of a vision. There were times when even the 
highest grade of the profession, the keeping the King's 
conscience, seemed scarcely beyond my grasp ; whety 
to the occupation of the courts, I rejoicingly added the 






THE SQUIRE*S TALE* 


so 

* ^ 

occupation of the cabinet, and contemplated the delight 
of flying full speed from the chancery seat to thje throne of 
the Lords, bringing an ear still tingling with the squab¬ 
bles of counsel, to hear the squabbles repeated in the 
shape of appeals ; and then finishing the day by superin¬ 
tending a debate till midnight, on corn laws, reform, and 
the Catholic Question. 

But the race is not always to the swift. In the same 
midsummer circuit when 1 saw six king’s counsel and two 
•judges give way to the respective demands of gout, dropsy, 
and asthma, the natural fruit of success in their trade, I 
was seized at Lincoln by the fen-fever, which, after chain¬ 
ing me to my bed for six months, left me in such a state 
of debility that, on taking the advice of my pillow against 
the advice of all 41 my friends,” I abandoned the hope ot 
ever dying lord chancellor. 

The law had, however, taught me one thing, that every 
man who will take the trouble of judging for himself, is 
the best judge of his own affairs. It taught me another too. 
that there is no crime more easily forgiven than the retire¬ 
ment of a rival. Armed thus against the regrets of my 
cotemporaries, and the advice of my most pertinacious 
friends, I made up my mind at once ; sold of}' my law-books 
rendered invaluable as they were by many a fragment of 
random poetry, the product of briefless hours, and occa¬ 
sionally illuminated with pen and ink caricatures of some 
of the most formidable blockheads of the profession ; and 
finally shook off the dust of my feet against the gates of 
Westminster. 

I had inherited a small freehold of a few hundreds a 
year, about fifty miles from London. To this I sent down 
my remaining chattels, and in three days from my bidding 
farewell to the smoke and uproar of the great city, to am¬ 
bition and the frowning majesty of the 44 fourfold bench,” 
l was sitting at a casement overlooking a quiet valley co¬ 
vered with cows and clover, and discussing a cool bottle of 
wine to the song of goldfinches and linnets, without a 
tear for operas, silk gowns, or debates in Lords or Com- * 
mons. 

Arthur Young advises a settler in the country to make 
his first application to the parson ; but a writer on hus- 






THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


13 


bandry can think of nothing hut tithes. I made my first 
• application to the parson ; but it was to marry me. In 
one of rny annual visits, 1 had found a pretty creature 
straying among my carnations and roses, as blooming as 
themselves, and as innocent as the butterfly that shook its 
yellow wings over them. She fled like a fawn, and though 
I was not sportsman enough to pursue, I did what wag 
just as absurd ; I took her image with me, and saw it for 
the next six months impasted on the brown pages of my 
folios. The sylph-like shape started upon me from the 
5tat.utes-at-large ; and many a time I saw the coral lip 
and blue eye gleaming from parchment as wrinkled as 
her grandmother. 

The heart of man has been long said to be a craving 
thing, a void that must be filled. The virtuoso fills it 
with Roman potsherds, buttons of King Brute, and far¬ 
things of Queen Elizabeth. The connoisseur fills it with 
undoubted portraits of Shakspeare manufactured within 
the week, noseless statues, and canvass covered with defor¬ 
mity. The old bachelor is proud of being the last pos¬ 
sessor of a queue, of adhering to powder with a fidelity 
strong even to the grave, and of exhibiting the most ridi¬ 
culous figure that walks the round world. The old lady, 
destitute of other delights, satiates her vacuity with cats, 
china, and the affections of canary birds. 

But my tastes did not lie in those directions, and yet 1 
had my vacuity too. Neither the love of law, nor the am¬ 
bition of the woolsack, had stopped up the gulf, though 
they prevented its spreading, like the gulf of Curtius, to the 
absorption of the whole man. The hubbub of the courts, 
where glorious uncertainty sits of old, and like Milton’s 
i fiend, by u decision more embroils the fray,” might deafen 
I for the hour my acute perception of those whisperings 
which told me of the folly of wasting life on the fooleries 
and fallacies of mankind, of turning my brain into a box 
'■! of black-letter and dusty bitterness, and of struggling 
I through forty or fifty years of obsolete study, obscure 
’ I quarrel, and exhausted lungs, only to die of the gout at 
last; but the moment of my quitting the clamour of the 
6 j noonday Themis for my lonely chambers in the Temple 
''| always brought back my rustic fantasies ; and nothing 

Vol. I.—2 





14 


TIIE SQITRe’s TALE. 


but a fortitude worthy of a dancing bear, or of a monarch 
standing out the bows and congratulations of a levee day, 
had often prevented my inlaying my briefs with bucolics, 
and turning poet during term. Now, however, the self- 
denial was at an end. T had registered a vow against 
44 making the worse appear the better reason” for the rest 
of my days ; and on a day propitious to the affairs of the 
heart, I discovered that my sylph had no objection to be 
married, and that she would as soon be married to me as 
to any one else. She was the thirteenth daughter of our 
curate, a sound divine, who served three churches on 
seventy pounds a year.* He was honest enough to feign 
no hesitation where he felt none ; and I was made, as the 
world phrases it, a happy man. 

I may be forgiven for talking of this period of my life, 
for it was my pleasantest. My sylph had laid aside her 
wings without giving up her playfulness. She was pretty 
and fond ; she thought me by much the wisest and most 
learned personage the sun shone on ; and grieved as she 
was by the superior finery of a sugar-bakers establish¬ 
ment, whose labours sweetened half the coffee of Europe, 
and whose wealth unluckily overflowed in a new mansion 
and preposterous demesne within a stone’s throw of our 
cottage, she preserved, at least, the average temper of the 
matrimonial state. While she was busy with domestic 
cares, l was plying my pen ; and statesmen yet unborn 
may thank me for the gratuitous wisdom of the hints that 
I threw out in the shape of pamphlet and paragraph. But 
the world is an ungrateful one after all ; and 1 w r as not 
summoned to the privy council. 

In this primitive way I glided on for twenty years ; fa¬ 
mous for the earliest roses, the largest cucumbers, and the 
two prettiest daughters in the county. I played the cas¬ 
tanets, spoke French, and interpreted a turnpike-act, all 
better than any man for fifty miles round. I was applied 
to for cheap law by the ploughmen, wisdom by the puz¬ 
zled magistrates ; and was even occasionally consulted in 
his Greek by the excellent curate, whose Oxford recollec¬ 
tions were considerably rubbed out by the wear and tear 
of half a century : even the sugar-baker, in his less exalt¬ 
ed moments, admitted that i was rather an intelligent kind 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


15 


of person for a man of five hundred a year. Yet if this 
mighty refiner’s praise were flattering to my vanity, his 
opulence was fatal to my peace. The liveries, equipage, 
and banquets of Mr. Molasses disturbed my wife’s pillow; 
and every new dinner of three courses turned our bread 
into bitterness. 

But the county election drew on ; and the sugar-baker, 
rich enough to purchase the souls and bodies of a province, 
began his canvass by a double expansion of his hospitality. 
Laced liveries twice as deep, dinners twice as sumptuous, 
balls twice as frequent, and guests flocking in crowcfs, 
stimulated my wife’s vexation to the utmost pitch. Many 
a keen glance was levelled at the humiliating contrast of 
our woodbine-faced cottage with the mighty mansion of 
yellow brick that towered like a mountain of flame above 
our trees ; many a murmur I heard at the folly of abandon¬ 
ing a profession in which a man “ might be a lord,” in¬ 
stead of being extinguished by a trader ; and from time to 
time a curtain-lecture exploded so directly on my head, 
that if I were younger, I might have been frightened into 
flying the country, burying myself in parchments again, 
and dying a chancellor after all. 


> 


CHAPTER II. 

i . » * • 

Winter was at hand. My fields looked frowningly ; 
birds, fruits, and flowers, had all deserted the welkin ; and 
I was wandering down the dreariest path of our dreariest 
common, merely to escape the flood of showy equipages 
that rolled to Molasses’ house for the double purpose of 
banqueting and congratulating the owner on the arrival 
of his intended son-in-law, Sir Mordecai Muscavado, the 
junior partner of the firm, “ from a continental tour,” 
when my meditation on the unequal distribution of wealth 
in this world was broken by a horseman’s bursting upon 



16 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


me from a turn of the road. The collision was more form¬ 
idable to the cavalier than to me ; for while it merely flung 
me into the thicket, it laid him in the centre of the slough. 
The plunge was complete, and never was the world nearer 
losing an eminent, solicitor ; for such, on removing a 
complete mask of the richest marl in our county from his 
visage, I discovered him to be, and one of the old predic¬ 
tors of my fame and fortune besides. Ilis prediction bad 
turned out partly true ; for he produced from the very 
penetralia of his surtout a huge enclosure, black-edged, 
sealed with triple seals, and directed to me in the sternest 
band of the scrivener. 

1 had never much loved the professional Visage, and I 
had always thought that the whole apparatus of mourning 
letters ought to be abolished by act of parliament; for let 
them come from whom they will, they put the subject in 
bodily fear ; those outward and visible signs of evil being 
also utterly useless, telling us nothing but that evil is 
somewhere in the wind, and propagating the terror, even 
where no one would care a farthing lor the intelligence 
when the mysterious mischief was opened. They put it 
in the power, too, of every fool who has lost an infant of 
three minutes old, or a grandmother of a century, to throw 
a whole community into alarm, until his black-edged stock 
is out. I confess that I never receive one of those mis¬ 
sives of death without anticipating the mortality of every 
soul I value upon the face of the globe. 

I held the packet in my hand, trembling to open it, and 
know what new stroke of fate was falling upon me; for 
l was hopeless of any explanation from the mouth of the 
half-choked solicitor. At length he muttered the name 
of an old relative of mine, whom I had seen but once, 
then quarrelled with and shrunk from ever after. He had 
been in the military service of the East India Company : 
had risen to rank ; seen every man round him fall in the 
field, die of claret, or go off in the cholera ; until, sur¬ 
prised at his own escape, he had thrown up his commis¬ 
sion, returned to Europe, and sat himself down in the 
suburbs of London, a lonely wretch, to complain of want 
of society; an idler, to lament his having nothing to do ; 
an abjurer of his kindred, to upbraid them with having 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


17 


deserted him ; and with ten thousand pounds a year, to 
execrate the dearness of the times, the weight of taxes, 
and the difficulty of enjoying himself without ruin. 

Twenty years had thus rolled over this human mummy, 
only to make his skin more shrivelled, his mind more 
peevish, and his fortune more cumbrous : he could nol 
be more useless, idle, or lonely. Life at length wore out. 
The report of his illness drew round him flocks of relations 
on the wing, like the crows, and with nearly the same 
purpose. He enjoyed one moment in his twenty years 
—it was when, in writing his will, he cut off every soul 
ofl them with a shilling a piece ; and after pondering 
whether he should leave his opulence to pay the national 
debt, or to be battled for in Chancery to the ruin of them 
all, a final impulse of scorn poured the golden stream upon 
the only one who had never followed or flattered him in 
life, and who had left him to die without watching the 
hour for his plunder. I was the lucky man. 

Never was solicitor received as was this man of mire 
on his introduction to my family. The whole household 
were in ecstacy. My wife, no longer the sylph culling 
lilies and roses, but a handsome, solid matron, deep in 
the secrets of the cuisine—my daughters, two tall and 
glowing creatures, on the verge of womanhood—the very 
housemaid under my roof saw, with the quickness of the 
sex, the whole glittering future. I, too, philosopher as I 
thought myself, was not without my splendid follies ; and 
when at length we sat down to our supper, not even the 
din of Mr. Molasses’ closing festival, the rattling of car¬ 
riages, and the squabbles of footmen, were heard in the 
strife of delighted tongues, the scorn of my wife for the 
mushroom money of trade,' and the rapture of my fair 
daughters at the prospect of a season in London. 

The solicitor too, happy that his neck was not broken, 
relaxed from his professional grimness, and told bar stories, 
valuable for at least their age. My best bottle of claret 
was broached ; and before 1 bade the world good night, 
there was not a more exhilarated sensorium under the 
canopy of the stars. 

The hour ought to have been happy, for it was the last 
that I ever experienced. 


18 THE SQUIRE S TALE. 


CHAPTER III. 

Time pressed. I set off at day-break for London ; 
plunged into the tiresome details of legateeship ; and 
after a fortnight’s toil, infinite weariness, and longings to 
breathe in any atmosphere unchoked by a million of chim¬ 
neys, to sleep where no eternal rolling of equipages should 
disturb my rest, and to enjoy society without being tram¬ 
pled on by dowagers fifty deep, I saw my cottage-roof 
once more. 

But where was the cheerfulness that once made it more 
than a palace to me ? The remittances that I had made 
from London were already conspiring against my quiet. 

1 could scarcely get a kiss from either of my girls, they 
were in such merciless haste to make their-dinner “ toilet.” 
My kind and comely wife was actually not to be seen ; 
and her apology, delivered by a coxcomb in silver lace to 
the full as deep as any in the sugar-baker’s service, was, 
that “his lady would have the honour of waiting on me 
as soon as she was dressed.” This was, of course, the 
puppy’s own version of the message; but its meaning 
was clear, and it was ominous. 

Dinner came at last: the table was loaded with awk¬ 
ward profusion ; but it was as close an imitation as we 
could yet contrive of our opulent neighbour’s display. 
No less than four footrnen,*discharged as splendid super¬ 
fluities-from the household of a duke, waited behind our 
four chairs, to make their remarks on our style of eating- 
in contrast with the polished performances at their late 
master’s. But Mrs. Molasses had exactly four. The 
argument was unanswerable. Silence and sullenness 
reigned through the banquet; but on the retreat of the 
four gentlemen who did us the honour of attending, the 
whole tale of evil burst forth What is the popularity ol 
man ? The whole family had already dropped from the 
highest favouritism into the most angry disrepute. A 
kind of little rebellion raged against us in the village : we 





TIIE WOES OF WEALTH. 


39 


were hated, scorned, and libelled on all sides. My 
unlucky remittances had done the deed. 

The village milliner, a cankered old carle, who had 
made caps and bonnets for the vicinage during the last 
forty years, led the battle. The wife and daughters of a 
man of East Indian wealth were not to be clothed like 
meaner souls ; and the sight of three London bonnets in 
my pew had set the old sempstress in a blaze. The flame 
was easily propagated. The builder of my chaise-cart 
was irritated at the handsome barouche in which my family 
now moved above the heads of mankind. The rumour 
that champagne had appeared at the cottage roused the 
indignation of the honest vintner who had so long supplied 
me with port ; and professional insinuations of the modified 
nature of this London luxury were employed to set the sneer- 
ers of the village against me and mine. Our four footmen had 
been instantly discovered by the eye of our opulent neigh¬ 
bour ; and the competition was at once laughed at as a folly, 
and resented as an insult. Every hour saw’ some of my 
old friends falling away from me. An unlucky cold, w’hich 
seized one of my daughters a week before my return, had 
cut away my twenty years’ acquaintance, the village-doctor, 
from my cause ; for the illness of an u heiress” was not to 
be cured by less than the first medical authority of the pro ¬ 
vince. The supreme ASsculapius was accordingly called 
in ; and his humbler brother swore, in the bitterness of 
his soul, that he would never forget the affront on this 
side of death’s door. The inevitable increase of dignity 
which communicated itself to the manners of my whole 
household did the rest; and if my wife held her head high, 
never was pride more peevishly retorted. Like the per¬ 
formers in a pillory, we seemed to have been elevated only 
for the benefit of a general pelting. 

Those were the women's share of the mischief ; but I 
was not long without administering in person to our unpo¬ 
pularity. The report of my fortune had, as usual, been 
enormously exaggerated ; and every man who had a debt 
to pay, or a purchase to make, conceived himself u bound 
to apply first to his old and excellent friend, to whom the 
accommodation for a month or two must be such a trifle.’ 
If I had listened to a tenth of those compliments, “ their 




20 


TPIE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


old and excellent friend” would have only preceded them 
to a jail. In some instances I complied, and so far only 
showed my folly; for who loves his creditor ? My refusal 
of course increased the host of rny enemies ; and I was 
pronounced purse-proud, beggarly, and unworthy of the 
notice of the “ true gentlemen, who knew how to spend 
their money.” 

Yet, though I was to be thus abandoned by my fox¬ 
hunting friends, I was by no means to feel myself the in¬ 
habitant of a solitary world. If the sudden discovery of 
kindred could cheer me under my calamities, no man 
might have passed a gayer life. For a long succession of 
years I had not seen a single relative. Not that they alto¬ 
gether disdained even the humble hospitalities of my cot¬ 
tage, or the humble help of my purse ; on the contrary, 
they liked both exceedingly, and would have exhibited 
their affection in enjoying them as often as I pleased. 

But l had early adopted a resolution, which I recom¬ 
mend to all men. I made use of no disguise on the sub¬ 
ject of our mutual tendencies. I knew them to be selfish, 
beggarly in the midst of wealth, and artificial in the fulness 
of protestation. I disdained to play the farce of civility 
with them. I neither kissed nor quarrelled with them ; 
but I quietly shut my door, and at last allowed no foot of 
their generation inside it. They hated me mortally in 
consequence, and I knew it. I despised them, and I 
conclude they knew that too. But I was resolved that 
they should not despise me ; and 1 secured that point by 
not suffering them to feel that they had made me their 
dupe. The nabob’s will had not soothed their tempers ; 
and I vvas honoured with their most smiling animosity. 

But now, as if they were hidden in the ground like 
weeds only waiting for the shower, a new and boundless 
crop of relationship sprang up. Within the first fortnight 
after my return, I was overwhelmed with congratulations 
from east, west, north, and south ; and every postscript 
pointed with a request for my interest with boards and 
public offices of all kinds ; with India presidents, treasury 
secretaries, and colonial patrons, for the provision of sons, 
nephews, and cousins, to the third and fourth generation. 

My positive declarations that I had no influence with 



THE WOES OF WEALTH* 


21 


ministers were received with resolute scepticism. I was 
charged with old obligations conferred on my grandfathers 
and grandmothers, and, finally, had the certain knowledge 
that my gentlest denials were looked upon as a compound 
ol selfishness and hypocrisy. Before a month was out, I 
had extended my sources of hostility to three fourths of the 
kingdom, and contrived to plant in every corner some in¬ 
dividual who looked on himself as bound to say the worst 
he could of his heartless, purse-proud, and abjured kins¬ 
man. 

I should have sturdily borne up against all this while 1 
could keep the warfare out of my own county. But what 
man can abide a daily skirmish round his house ? I began to 
think of retreating while I was yet able to show my head ; 
tor, in truth, I was sick of this perpetual belligerency. I 
loved to see happy human faces, f loved the meeting of 
those old and humble friends to whose faces, rugged as 
they were, I was accustomed. I liked to stop and hear the 
odd news of the village, and the still older versions of 
London news that transpired through the lips of our esta¬ 
blished politicians. I liked an occasional visit to our little 
club, where the exciseman, of fifty years, standing, was 
our oracle in politics ; the attorney, of about the same 
duration, gave us opinions on the drama, philosophy, and 
poetry, all equally unindebted to Aristotle; and my mild 
and excellent father-in-law, the curate, shook his silver 
locks in gentle laughter at the discussion. 1 loved a supper 
in my snug parlour with the choice half dozen ; a song 
from my girls, and a bottle after they were gone to dream 
of bow-knots and bargains for the next day. 

But my delights were now all crushed. Another Midas, 
all I touched had turned to gold ; and I believe in m'y soul 
that, with his gold, I got credit for his ass’s ears. 

However, f had long felt that contempt for popular 
opinion which every man feels who knows of what miser¬ 
able materials it is made—how much of it is mere absur¬ 
dity—how much malice—how much more the frothy 
foolery and maudlin gossip of the empty of this empty 
generation. “ What was it to me if the grown children 
of our idle community, the male babblers, and the female 
cutters-up of character, voted me, in their common-place 







99 

/W Amt 


THE SQUIRE'S TALE. 


souls, the blackest of black sheep ? I was still strong in 
the solid respect of a few worth them all.” 

Let no man smile when I say that, on reckoning up 
this Theban band of sound judgment and inestimable 
fidelity, L found my muster reduced to three, and those 
three of so unromantic a class as the gray-headed excise¬ 
man, the equally gray-headed solicitor, and the curate. 

But let it be remembered that a man must take his 
friends as fortune wills ; that he who can even imagine 
that he has three is under rare circumstances; and that, 
as to the romance, time, which mellows and mollifies so 
many things, may so far extract the professional virus out 
of exciseman and solicitor, as to leave them both not in¬ 
capable of entering into the ranks of humanity. 


CHAPTER IV. 

In my vexation I called on the old man of revenue, 
whom I found, not at the receipt of custom, but perplex¬ 
ing his ancient eyes over a long sheet of closely written 
paper. I let loose my griefs without delay, and exclaimed 
against the immeasurable folly of my applicants—“ a set 
of hollow and stupid knaves, not one of whose faces I had 
ever seen, or ever desired to see ; whom, if I ever knew, 
I had totally forgotten—a tribe of leeches, that would 
never have stirred from the bottom of their pool but to 
drain me, if they could, of my blood.” 

“ Just the way of the world,” said my venerable friend, 
glancing down his laborious manuscript. “ Every man 
who gets any thing by the wheel of fortune is supposed to 
have ten times as much to give, and to have nothing to do 
but to throw money right and left down every mouth that 
opens for it. And the thing is more preposterous still in 
your case, who could not know one of them.” 



THE SQUIRE'S TALE. 


23 


14 No, not from the king of Timbuctoo,” was my affir¬ 
mation. 

“ There’s the point,” observed my comforter. “The 
goods of this life always bring their troubles, and one of 
them undoubtedly is this kind of canvass for your interest 
for strangers. Though, for old friends, the matter would 
of course be somewhat different.” 

u Totally; there is nothing that I should do with greater 
pleasure than any service in my power for an old friend.” 

“ Then you have saved yourself the trouble of reading 
my cramp hand ; for I was on the point of asking you to 
forward my memorial to the chairman of the customs. The 
collectorship of tire county is vacant: a word from a man 
of your fortune will command the place ; and the thing 
will be done at once.” 

I was astonished : this ardent candidate was sixty-five 
if he was an hour. I knew that nothing short of a gene¬ 
ral revolution could give him the place, or short of a mira¬ 
cle make him equal to its duties. As to “ ray interest,” 
I vainly attempted to prove that I had no more than him¬ 
self. He had made up his mind on the subject. We 
parted decorously, but l saw that I was erased frdm my 
old friend’s tablets for ever. N ~ 

~ As I was walking down the street, vexed, and yet 
laughing at the cross-grained fate that clung to me, I smote 
against the solicitor. In my vexation I told him the story 
of my late interview, which he enjoyed prodigiously. “ The 
old fool,” cried he, “ longing for the loaves and fishes still ? 
Why, he might have had his superannuation allowance a 
dozen years ago. But avarice, avarice, the bane of age ! 
And to ask so lucrative a situation too! and of all men. 
from you, who keep so much aloof from politics and party!” 

“ Me, who could scarcely get a franc from a county 
member! who pocket none of the nation’s money ! me, 
who know no one, who keep up no connexion, who am 
forgotten, and desire to be forgotten!” 

“ All true ; yet, my good friend, there are those who 
cannot be forgotten, let them do what they will. The 
early ornaments of their profession, whose loss to the bar 
and to the country is still, 1 can tell you, from my personal 
knowledge, spoken of on circuit, cannot be without influ- 





u 


TIIE SQUIKe’s TALE. 


ence ; many an inquiry I have heard made after you among 
the solicitors of standing, and many a glass have we drunk 
to your health at the Lion and Crown.” 

The compliment was received like all addressed to a 
man’s vanity ; and in the fervour of the moment, I hear- j 
lily shook my old companion’s ink*distained hand. 

u In answering these good wishes for your health and 
happiness, wherever you were,” pursued he, “ 1 always 
added, from my own knowledge, that neither outside nor 
inside the bar, and neither following the profession, nor 
indulging himself in retirement, the otium cum dignitate , 
as friend Horace calls it, was theie a living man who took 
greater pleasure in doing every kindness to his friends.” 

The speech was made in a tone of sincerity that touched 
me. 1 am not flint or iron ; 1 hate imposture, and could 
resist the most pathetic speech that ever fell in honey from 
the lip of chicane. But “here was nature.” I felt that, 
here was truth besides ; and if any man will say that some¬ 
thing like a tear stole down from eyes albeit unused to the 
melting mood—why, let him say it, 1 shall not contradict 
him. 

“ Right, my good friend,” was my reply, when I could 
get rid of this womanish weakness. “ Right, whatever the 
world may think of me, it shall never have it to say that 1 
turned my back on my old companions, that money had 
the power to shut up my heart, or that I refused a friend 
any service to the extent of my means.” 

The solicitor shook my hand in turn, and then clearing 
his voice, and with a look of remarkable modesty, for his 
profession, informed me, that having long had a wish to 
retire from the active labours of his office, and having 
heard that a place under the chancellor was vacant, he, 
after some consideration, had made up his mind to apply 
for it, through me. 

I was astonished. u I had never even seen the high 
officer in whose hand was the place. Besides, had I not 
just declared my utter want of influence with public men ? 
and had he not just acknowledged the folly of our old 
associate ?” 

“ The case is wholly different,” was the answer, in an 
unusual sharpness of tone. u That old fool is already past 













THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


or. 
w 

bis labour ; he asked for a place under government, which 
has already more mouths than it can feed ; and he asked 
for it from a man who notoriously has never had any con 
iiexion with government, never so much as had a job of a 
turnpike road, nor a commission for a cousin in the militia. 
Whereas I apply for a professional situation which must 
be filled by a man of ability, experience, and character, and 
apply for it to a member of the profession, retired, ’lis 
true, yet still well known to the body in general; and who, 
if he may not be on personal terms with the Lord Chan¬ 
cellor, must have influence from his fortune. Besides, 
the difference in our ages is important, the exciseman 
being at least sixty-nine or seventy, and 1 being, at my last 
birth-day, but sixty-five.” 

I was absurd enough to reason with the candidate ; but 
he was resolute in his demand of my interference. All 
the logic of Westminster Hall could not have convinced 
i him that a man of ten thousand a year was not able to 
m&ke him any thing short of the keeper of the seals him¬ 
self. fn vexation, 1 was prevailed on to write a letter to 
an almost casual acquaintance in the chancery court, in¬ 
quiring how the situation was to be obtained. My cor¬ 
respondent took more trouble on the subject than I could 
have expected, and carried my letter to the great function¬ 
ary, who laughed at us all three, but politely wrote a line 
to regret that the place had been already disposed of. 
The line was enclosed by me to the candidate with addi 
tional regrets ; but from that hour he never looked at the 
same side of the street witli me. 1 shook rnv head over 
the vanity of age and the fickleness of friendship ; he shook 
his over the faithlessness of human promises, and the sel- 
’ fishness of sudden fortune. His employment gave him 
. the range of all our society, such as it was ; and every 
i soul was made a parly to hi3 convictions that I would not 
j stir a finger for the behoof of any being under the sun. 

I was a stubborn fellow where I had to resist direct 
wrong ; but here I was beset by glances, whispers, and 
inuendoes, of which I could make nothing. Defence was 
idle when there was nothing to repel; and I had no alter¬ 
native but that of drawing a rampart round iny bouse, or 
showing off in a style of equipage and dinner-pomp that 
Vol. I.- 3 ■ 







26 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


would dazzle and dine the county out of its ill-will. I had 
seen the feeding expedient successful in more instances 
than one, and our two representatives had just wiped off 
a remarkably thick stain of political trimming by a brace 
of new-built barouches and a couple of venison feasts, 
which, however, diminished the hostility in the most effec¬ 
tive style, for the haunches killed two of the fattest and 
most furious patriots of our corporation. 

But I had my objections to this mode of teaching the 
world to swallow its discontent. Of all the miseries of 
human life, I had the most incurable aversion to three ; a 
dinner of three hours ; the conversation of the squires after 
it; and the conversation of the ladies of the squires after 
that again. I had no taste for the bottle, no ear for the 
feats of fox-hunting ; and, let me be forgiven for the 
acknowledgment, no capacity for the eloquence that over 
its coffee excruciated alike, character, fashions, and the 
mother-tongue. 

Yet, was I to live a hermit, at the moment too when I 
felt most able and most inclined to expand my social 
circle ? In this dilemma, I ordered my horse, and took 
the road to have a quiet dinner with my best and last 
friend, my venerable father-in-law. The ride through the 
fields exorcised half the livid demons that flitted about my 
brain ; the cheerful blast that sent the clouds flying along 
the sky of summer-blue chased away my vapours ; and by 
the time of coming within sight of the little tenement m 
which the curate sheltered himself, his old wife and his 
ancient cat, the associates of many a long year of lonely 
comfort, I could have joined in a canzonet with the robins 
that opened their little red throats on every hawthorn 
round me 

The willing hospitality of the old man and his female 
sharer in the good and ill of fifty years ; the air of gentle 
tranquillity in every thing that l saw, even the contented 
purring of the sleek cat that lay turning her shining sides 
' to the last gleam of a superb sunset, threw a covering of 
peace over my mind, and, as we drank our coffee at the 
door of a garden sending up a u steam of rich distilled 
perfumes” through the twilight, I congratulated my vene- 





TIIE WOES or WEALTH. 


27 


i* able relative on the lot which had been cast in such an 
abode of quiet happiness. 

u Here,” said I, “ if the eye is to be delighted by na¬ 
tural beauty, or the heart to be soothed by secure enjoy¬ 
ment, what can man ask more than the scene around us, 
and the spot from which we view it ? I am sick of the mi¬ 
serable restlessness that throws away actual enjoyment for 
a shadow. At this hour, thousands who might possess 
every real happiness of which the human heart is capable, 
are flinging it away in pursuit of things as empty as air, 
or as deleterious as so much poison.” 

“ Right, my dear son,” said the curate, “ the desire of 
more money than we can enjoy, and more power than we 
can manage, is the grand absurdity of mankind. When 1 
hear of the days and nights of ambition, I first feel indig¬ 
nant, and then learn to pity the blindness of our species. 
Yet the passion is sometimes so strange, that neither pity 
or indignation can keep us from laughing at its victims. 
i r our story of the two candidates is ludicrous, yet melan¬ 
choly. What would become of our poor old friend the 
exciseman, torn away from all his usual haunts, to be 
pushed about in the bustle of a sea-port, and harassed with 
the new details of a. weight of business to which his 
greenest years would probably have been unequal ? And 
more ludicrous still, the veteran solicitor ? Could not even 
his classic recollections remind him of the philosopher’s 
advice to the King of Epirus, and teach him to enjoy his 
quiet without fighting his way only to put it in danger ?” 

U I sincerely wish, my dear sir,” said I, “-that you 
would take the two idiots to task ; for to me they will not 
listen for a moment. Invite them to such a dinner as you 
have given to me ; make them forget their canvassing and 
correspondence in this landscape ; and let us wash away 
all our quarrels in a bottle of my best port, which you 
shall have by to-morrow morning.” 

u Agreed,” said my relative. u I shall have the table 
planted on this very spot; show them my hill and dale, 
my garden and orchard, and all my comforts lying under 
the eye, and ask them is it not madness at their age to 
diink of change ?” 

The sun had now dipped beyond the hills, and my groom 



THE SQUIRE'S TALE. 


is 

brought my horse. As I was putting my foot into tii© 
stirrup, the curate came towards me. “There was one 
little matter,” said he, 44 that I had intended to write about, 
but I may as well take the opportunity of mentioning it at 
once. I this morning received a letter from a friend 
whom I had requested to give me the earliest notice 5 —i 
listened ; but the sentence was broken short, and not re¬ 
sumed again till after the curate had stooped down and re¬ 
covered his composure, by patting the head of the worn- 
out spaniel that tottered after him from the parlour. 

44 The matter is this,” said he, advancing his quivering 
hand to my horse’s crest, and with his conscious eye cast 
down— 44 your pleasant conversation did not give me time 
to mention it before. My friend’s letter states that my 
rector is in a precarious state of health. Now he holds 
two livings : this living, of which I am the unworthy cu¬ 
rate, has, I know, been promised to the squire’s second 
hope long ago. But the other benefice—in short, mV 
dear sir, if you would apply for it on my part, those things 
are always at the disposal of the county members : half a 
dozen lines from a man of your fortune would make mo 
rector of Spungemoor parish, and happy for life.” 

I could not believe him serious, and showed my 
opinion by bursting out into laughter. He was visibly 
offended. 44 You must not class rne,” said he, 44 with the 
two fools that we have been talking of. The circum¬ 
stances are totally of another character, they asked for 
situations in the gift of government and of a law lord, 
and asked them from a man who never had any connexion 
with government, and who had long given up all con¬ 
nexion with the law. You gave the two dotards the pro¬ 
per answer. But I apply for a favour to which my ser¬ 
vices should give me a claim of themselves ;—and to a 
personal relative, who needs only express his wish on the 
subject. With our members who know his interest at the 
election, and who would not think of a refusal, a word 
makes me a rector; the first step to an archdeaconry, 
thence to a deanery ; and from that the way is open. 
Heaven knows how far.” 
a Perhaps even to Lambeth,’* said I 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 29 

u No, no,” said he with a smile : “yet, when a man 
once becomes conspicuous—” 

I attempted to sooth him by representing the infinite 
discomfort which he must feel in breaking up all his long 
cemented associations ; leaving his old people for stran¬ 
gers ; and entering in all points on a new course of labour, 
independently of the notorious reputation of the new pa¬ 
rish for riot, wildness, and disgusts of every kind. 

A conscientious minister must not shrink from doing 
his duty, however laborious,” was the meek answer, with 
heavenward hands and eyes. 

u But, my dear sir, the difficulty which might task the 
most vigorous diligence of early life, ought not to be laid 
on the shoulders of one so long serving in the ranks of 
the church, though still so excellent as yourself.” 

“ So long in her ranks ! and what better claim can there 
be to preferment? As to age, I am only seventy-three. 
My last rector lived to seventy-five ; and there lias been 
an instance of a bishop living to ninety.” 

This he spoke with the palpable consciousness of an 
unanswerable argument ; and I made no attempt to an¬ 
swer it. I bade him good night •. and throwing the reins 
on my horse’s neck, moved slowly home, wrapt in medi¬ 
tation at the compound called man. 

The meditation convinced me that my venerable friend 
would be made so thoroughly wretched by change, even if it 
were to lift him to the primacy, that it cost me a long letter 
to try to convince him that I was in the right, and he in the 
wrong. I should have known the fate of my letter from 

I the fate of all written with the same purpose. He was 
more convinced than ever of his having exercised the 
, soundest judgment that could enter into the human brain 
I owed sumething to the man who had given me his 
daughter for better for worse ; and though I should have 
as willingly volunteered the pillory, 1 wrote to the county 
member, a monstrous aristocrat, who cultivated democ¬ 
racy. I scorned him on both grounds : his personal pride 
disgusted me, and his beggarly truckling to the rabble 
i whom, in the insolence of his secret soul, he looked upon 
as the pebble under hisYeet, disgusted me still more. Yet 
in. his hands lav the benefice ; and from that hand I mus f 





30 


THE SQUIRE^ TALE, 


attempt to extract it. The attempt was loathingly made. 
In the most polite of answers the promise was given ; and 
fatal was the gift. 

The rector died within the month : he was a fat, jovial, 
and jocose person, who let things take their own way, 
and thought no one should repent but a poacher. My 
excellent father-in-law was of another mould, and he set 
himself to work reform. But Spunge-moor parish defied 
his climacterical vigour. It bordered an extent of shore 
fertile in nothing but the most daring smugglers that ever 
shipped brandy from Boulogne. It was a wilderness 
lashed and dashed by every tempest that swept from every 
point of the heaven ; and where it was peopled at all, 
its population was divided among gipsies, paupers, and 
poachers, thickening up like its thistles, even against the 
anathema of the late rector, magistrate and first-rate shot 
as he was ; the genus smuggler comprehending all these 
classes occasionally, and being regularly recruited from 
them all. 

Among those rebellious tribes, what hope was there 
for the solitary patriarch, verging on his century ? His 
llowers, his landscape, and his early flock, were equally 
lost to him ; and when I saw him fixed in the fulness 
of his desires, I saw as wretched a man as ever de¬ 
plored the folly of change. Here, at least, he could 
attach no blame to me. But my success in obtaining his 
object drew down additional county obloquy on the suitor, 
as one who would take the most humiliating steps to ag¬ 
grandize the most impotent member of his family, while 
he would not take the most obvious, easy, and honourable 
for a friend. This I might disregard ; but by the removal 
of the curate 1 had myself extinguished my third and last 
associate ; and I had now to fight the world alone 




THE WOES OF WEALTH. * 


3i 


CHAPTER V. 

My alternative was now to be put in practice ; and I 
determined to draw the rampart strong and high round 
myself. I had, in the spirit of Walpole’s proverb, con¬ 
trived to make one man unhappy, if not ungrateful ; and 
by the same act, to make a hundred doubly discontented. 
But 1 was at no time a great worshipper of the world’s 
good graces ; so, wrapping myself up in my philosophy, 
I ordered all visiters to be shut out, broke up a whole sum¬ 
mer’s plan of dinners and tea-drinkings, to the amaze¬ 
ment of my wife, and the violent surprise, wrath, and gos¬ 
siping of the crowd, who with all their scorn were willing 
enough to feed upon the prodigal; and having thus set 
the seal to my crimes, and proved to the satisfaction of 
every tongue of the thousand that I was either mad, or a 
bankrupt, or both, took to my library, plunged among my 
papers, and translated the first book of the Iliad into as 
stubborn verse as ever was hammered upon the anvil of 
Cowper. 

But what earthly appetite can feed upon Ambrosia for 
ever ? Heroes and battles, descended deities, and all 
Olympus in arms, were fine contrasts to village squabbles ; 
hut the rapture wore off in a week. My nature was so¬ 
cial ; I had been accustomed for many a long year to the 
easy commerce with my fellows, that cost no outlay of 
brains, and is content with no more formidable adventure 
than the news of the day. 1 loved to hear the babblingof 
my linsey-wolsey compatriots upon matters not much more 
level to their comprehension than the Copernican system ; 
and to receive the intelligence of subverted cabinets, bat¬ 
tles to be fought, and nations to be undone, from the daily 
circle of politicians gathered about our post-office like 
nestlings open-mouthed for their daily food. • But this 
was at an end. The civility was perhaps still there ; but 
the better thing, the cordiality, was gone. 

But had I no home ? 4 had, and one so suddenly suraptu* 





THE SQUIRE’S TALE-- 


ous, that I dreaded to touch any thing for fear of dismant¬ 
ling fifty invaluable things of or-molu, japan, and china ; 
chefs cVoeuvre every trinket of them. My chairs were 
figured satin, too costly to be looked at; for they were 
enveloped in eternal bibs and tuckers of canvass, and too 
delicate to bear any of the rustic usage, the leanings, 
loungings, and book burdens, that to me constituted the 
whole excellence of a chair. Wherever I trod, there re* 
posed some specimen of the arts too exquisite for human 
feet; and after having once in my hasty entrance from the 
garden trodden, black as gunpowder, the Brussels counte¬ 
nance of the great Blucher on a carpet unmatched on this 
side of the Channel, I interdicted myself the pleasure of 
treading on carpets for the time to come. 

I liked quiet. The hand of the workman was in full 
activity from morning till night. I hated to be driven 
from my customary room. A new ukase had ordered it 
to be fitted up in the style of a library comporting the lord 
of ten thousand a year. It was fitted up accordingly, and 
I never knew comfort in it again. My rough-backed old 
books were driven into banishment for strangers in mo¬ 
rocco, which I never desired to touch ; and my rambling 
pencil-sketches, my treasured letters, my rather dusty 
memoranda, all the clinging recollections, the pleasant 
records of old days, old dreams, and old friends, were put 
under sentence of eternal exile. 

Twenty years were extinguished in a week of papering, 
painting, and general renovation ; and to make the change 
more unpalatable still, the whole was under the superin¬ 
tendence of a Decorator, a “ professor” of puttings up 
and pullings down, a coxcomb from London, of supreme 
authority in matters of taste, and who made himself com ■ 
mandcr-in-chief of every soul in the house from the mo 
v ment of his alighting from his u britchska.” This Ra¬ 
phael of paper-stainers 1 was, by regular contract, obliged 
to entertain at my table, where he exhibited himself so 
perfect a connoisseur in claret and champagne, that 1 had 
only to swallow my wine in silence ; and talked so familiarly 
of princes and dukes, whom he had whitewashed into ele¬ 
gance, that he half turned the heads of my wife and 
laughters.. He rode my horses^ taught my' maid-servants- 


THE WOES OP WEALTH, 


33 


how to rouge, established a billiard table in my house, t© 
which he gave a general invitation to his professional ac¬ 
quaintances ; and by his dinner converse inflamed my 
four footmen into a demand for an increase of wages, and 
an allowance for eau de Cologne. 

1 bore all this for a while. Strong inclinations to kick¬ 
ing the puppy out sometimes nearly mastered me. But I 
! kept my foot in peace ; until one evening, straying to find 
a quiet moment in a lonely part of my garden, 1 heard the 
fellow ranting a tragedy speech in the most Parisian style. 
The speech was followed by a scream, and the sight of 
my younger daughter Emily rushing towards me in the 
highest possible indignation. The Decorator followed 
half tipsy. I interrupted his speech by an application to 
his feelings from the foot that had so long been kept in 
reluctant peace. He was astonished, but he had mingled 
with too many potentates to feel much abashed. His 
natural ease speedily returned, and he actually made his 
proposals for my daughter on the spot. It was answered 
by a repetition of the discipline. The puppy grew impu¬ 
dent, and talked of country bumpkins. He had fully earned 
a third application to his sensibilities, and he got what he 
earned. My last kick sent him down the steps of my 
hall-door. 

I had now satiated my wrath, done my duty, and cleared 
my table of a nuisance But what is to be had for nothing 
in this world of debt and credit ? On the other side of 
the account, 1 had laid grounds for an action ; I had sent 
a puppy to scatter scandal like wildfire w herever he showed 
his impudent face ; and I had left my house half furnished 
within a week of a masquerade, which, in all my scorn of 
mankind, my wife had insisted on giving, for the acknow¬ 
ledged purpose of returning the fetes that my luckless 
legacy had jdready brought upon us, but, as 1 verily be¬ 
lieve, with the pious intention of breaking the hearts of 
the whole Molasses dynasty finally and lor ever. 

The fete was inevitable ; for in the very hour in which 
I expelled the decorator, the cards had been despatched; 
and I had the indulgence of receivings once the compli¬ 
ments of the dynasty that they would be “ proud of the 
honour,” &c., a horse-load of billets to the same effect 





34 


tiie squire’s tale. 


from our whole population, and a notice of action for 
u an assault on the person of Agustus Frederic Byron 
Ultramarine, Esq., damages laid at five thousand pounds 1 . 5 

Here was a consequence of being just twenty times as 
rich as I ever expected to be. I could muster up a show 
of resolution now and then ; and, like a falling Caesar, in 
this extremity of my dictatorship, I determined to show 
the original vigour of my character. 1 became a reformer 
of the house, ordered my four footmen into my presence, 
and gave them a lecture on general conduct, which, it 
they had the sense to understand, would have been wortli 
all the lace on their livery. They bowed, withdrew, and 
in the next five minutes sent a paper signed by the four 
u requesting their conge."’' I never signed any thing in 
my life with half the pleasure. The female authorities 
below stairs were beyond my province and iny hope ; but 
the dignified resignation of their flirts rendered it a matter 
of delicacy that the ladies of the scullery should send in 
their resignation too. It was most graciously accepted. 
I turned them out root and branch, and on that night sat 
down in a house containing not a female but my wife, 
daughters, and an old housekeeper, too purblind to flirt, 
and too lame to run away. A neighbouring cow-boy was 
summoned to tend my horses, and 1 had the honour of 
locking my own hall-door. 

Troublesome as all this Was, yet when I at length sat 
down to supper, there was something so pleasant in the 
universal quiet contrasted with the customary hubbub of 
the house, and so unquestionable a relief in escaping from 
the supervision of the tall varlets behind our chairs, 
that our first sensation was one of comfort. The room, 

'tis true, was but half finished by my sublime friend Ul¬ 
tramarine. The ceilings were but half covered with flying 
nymphs and celestial flute and guitar players, tossing then- 
fair forms over pillows of every coloured cloud that Bond- 
street fancy could feign. The walls were one half fresco 
and the other half in their original dishabille, and the ten* 
der Chatelar sang to the fickle and beautiful Mary within 
an inch of a fox in full gallop, followed by a host of as 
dingy hunters as fox-chase ever supplied. 

But the distress was so ludicrous, that I had not felt so 
much inclined to make light of trouble since the first houi 



THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


25 

of my legacy ; and, if the truth were to be told, we were 
all much of the same mind. I saw my wife’s brow cleared 
more than dance or dinner had cleared it for the last 
three months; my girls told their pleasantries of the do¬ 
mestic gang by whom I had been so lately beset; and 
before our little unattended meal was done, I had almost 
imagined myself into the quiet and incalculable happiness 
of old times. 

My wife had been the u rose and expectancy of the fair 
state” for many a mile round in her youth. She was still 
handsome ; time had not diminished a grain of my fond¬ 
ness for the generous heart and loving hand that had so 
long taken the chances of the world with me. 1 perhaps 
loved her more ; or our feelings had become so entirely 
one, that I never dreamed of analyzing their degrees. 
Kind and true, with no other object in her thoughts but 
mine, our wishes, interests, and indulgences, were one; 
and we had seen year after year glide away with as few 
matrimonial rubs, at least, as most peers in the land. 

But daylight brought back our discomfiture. The sea! 
was to be neither laughed nor railed off the bond. The 
rout must be given, the house must be crowded from par¬ 
lour to attic with all the grimace, gossip, and gibberish, 
that could be gathered to feed on us, to stifle us on our 
own staircases, and thenceforward to make us the stop¬ 
gap of country conversation, the sneer of country elegance, 
and the mark of country envy, until some other victims 
could be turned out for the general diversion. 

In a grand council held over the breakfast-table, we 
revolved the several expedients to escape the calamity. 
Flight, sudden illness of the principals, a violent conta¬ 
gious fever broken out among the domestics, all were 
suggested, and all found wanting. It was shown that, 
where the ladies of the vicinage were determined on a 
party, they would not be repelled by a bulletin of the 
plague signed by three king’s physicians. The only 
plausible expedients seemed to be my own, and those 
were, in the first instance to declare that my London 
banker had failed, and carried off my thousands, as usual 
on those occasions, to America—an intimation, which in 
London, I had seen strip a man of every acquaintance on 






36 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


earth in the course of a single revolution of the sun. But 
this was overruled, as, in the country, if friendships were 
not more firm, routs were rarer ; and we should have the 
whole dancing population on us as merry as ever, if we 
were not worth sixpence in the world. My favourite 
expedient was to set the house on fire ; the true mode 
after all. But the council broke up without coming to a 
combustion. The fact was, that the women had ordered 
dresses from the supreme artiste of Paris, while the sugar- 
baker’s wife had only ransacked London. Triumph was 
certain, and the female votes carried it that the evil must 
be endured, and could be at worst only one night’s suffer¬ 
ing. With a heavy heart 1 prepared to be the gayest of 
the gay. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Time hurries on in spite of all the reluctance of mankind, 
and the dreaded ni^ht came. It was all that I had ex¬ 
pected it to be, with the exception that, from one of the 
serenest days of summer, the weather changed at a mo¬ 
ment’s warning into a tempest worthy of the north-west 
passage. Our fete champetre was blown into a thousand 
fragments. Our lamps, festooned among our elms, were 
sent flying like chain-shot through our windows ; our 
u grand emblematic” transparency, the masterpiece of a 
London Apelles, and which cost I dare not confess how 
much, was ripped from top to bottom at the first onset, 
and discharged with the force of a steam-engine down the 
u grand staircase” on the heads of an ascending column 
of quakers, devils, Jews, and Spanish grandees. The up¬ 
roar w r as tremendous ; and from my study, in which I had 
lingered till the first concourse should be quiet, and 1 
might venture forth with safety to my limbs, I heard the 
general crash, not undelighted with the anticipations of its 
clearing my house. 

„ Mr. Ultramarine's sudden retreat had left all our orna- 





THE WOES OF WEALTH* 


37 


\ ' • 

mental exploits half born. The cascade, painted to a fac¬ 
simile of Tivoli, was carried away by a burst of the rivulet 
that we had been nursing for the occasion. The superbe 
fontaine on the model of the grand tronc of Versailles, 
after flinging up half a dozen convulsive jets which burst 
into the drawing room windows and extravagated over 
the company, refused to play a drop more. The organ, 
expressly brought down from London to captivate us by 
unseen harmony from a grotto, for which the wall of my 
study was broken down, firmly resisted the touch of 
human finger during the night, or gave signs of life only 
in a succession of alternate screams and groans. The 
crowd was enormous, the heat stifling, the noise deafen- 
ing, and the crush hazardous to life and limb. To move, 
much less to dance, and least of all, to get a glass of wine 
or a -fragment of biscuit without a fair combat, became 
rapidly out of the question. Fixed, like one of my own 
candelabra, in the corner to which I had first worked my 
way, I saw, to my infinite alarm, the crowd increase without 
measure. The mask had sanctioned every thing and every 
body ; and I could soon discover, through all its pasteboard, 
that a multitude had made good their entree who had no 
invitation but their own. As the throng thickened, its 
materials seemed palpably to degenerate ; the malice 
of my village friends had mustered the rabble for my fete ; 
nameless figures, whose natural garb served them as mas¬ 
querade habits, and who played the clown with the truth 
of nature, fought their way through the mass of bantling 
and bruised shepherdesses, Dianas, and sultanas. To 
resist was soon hopeless, and, in the act of inquiring by 
what right a tall ruffian with a watchman’s coat and rattle 
» had made his appearance in my house, I at once received 
a volley of language that made all my belles clap their 
hands on their ears ; a grasp behind, which left my coat 
skirtless ; and a push before, which deprived me of an 
old and favourite repeater, that I would not have given 
for the fee-simple of the corporation. 

A new uproar from below announced that a reinforce 
ment was at hand, in the shape of the footmen, coachmen, 
and grooms, whom the increasing storm had driven withiir 
the house. Like the invasions of the Goths and Vandals. 

; • vol. i. — 4 






THE SQUIRE’S TALE, 


38 

this new irruption of barbarians drove forward the old , 
disorder “sat umpire of the night.” The temporary 
orchestra, left unfinished by our Decorator, found itself 
unable to sustain the weight of well-fed beauty that fled to 
its benches for refuge, and came down fiddlers and all 
with a crash of expiring harmony. The “ grand” supper- 
table, after having been fought upon for a considerable 
time, at length gave way to a grand assaut of the princi¬ 
pal champions, and after a heave or two rolled the whole 
battalia to the ground, and itself on the top of them. The 
conflict was doubly revived on the rising of the combat¬ 
ants ; decanters, ten guineas a pair, flew like meteors 
against pierglasses a hundred guineas a piece. My match¬ 
less Hockheim tumblers, ancient as Albert Durer, painted 
and cut with all indescribable griffins, virgins, and boars' 
heads, “ invaluable to the antiquary and man of taste,” 
and whose sale broke the heart of the Landgrave that had 
drained them from his cradle to his climacteric ; those mv 
muniments and treasures, that I had reserved for an heir¬ 
loom to satisfy my remotest generation of tire refinement 
of their ancestor, and that nothing should or could have 
won from my safe-keeping, but my wife’s begging and 
praying to have something to show on the table which 
defied Mr. Molasses and all his money to have, and 
which \vould consequently bow down to the dust his and 
his still prouder wife’s heart; those exquisite emblems, 
that an ancient Roman would have consecrated in the 
temple of Bacchus, and that I ought to have refused to all 
human threats and tears, I saw flashing through air, ground 
between teeth, trampled under heels, and finally levigated 
into the"'* original sand. 

The supreme catastrophe of the rout at length roused 
me to a sense of my duty. The chandelier, a huge pile, 
whose galaxy of prisms, drops, and stars, would have 
raised the envy of the Great Mogul, had given early signs 
of tottering. Our Decorator, ’tis true, had pledged his 
neck to us for its security, and I had reposed on the 
pledge, from presuming it the more valuable to a fellow 
who had nothing but his neck to lose. He had even given 
himself an experimental swing from its chain, and as 
neither its time nor his was yet come, he had been sus- 


T1IE WOES OF WEALTH. 


3l> 

pended in safety. But the general concussion, in which 
the very walls danced, at last reached the ceiling ; a fly¬ 
ing claret-jug gave the finishing blow, and down thundered 
the chandelier in a whirlwind of dust, plaster, and or-molu. 

In real alarm, [ extricated myself from the chaos to 
ascertain the fate of my family, and found my unfortunate 
wife doubly overwhelmed by the general discomfiture, 
and the fall of an immense screen, which one of our vil¬ 
lage architects had, in the fulness of his ingenuity, 
converted into a partition between the salle de danse , 
as it was announced in our programme —for we had a 
programme too—and the supper-room ; and which of 
course the first inundation of belles and beaux had swept 
away as if it had been gossamer. 

Rescuing the partner of my joys and sorrows from the 
ruin, w.ith the loss of a whole revenue in lace, feathers, 
and gros de Naples undone for ever ; and leaving the 
ground covered over with a full crop of beads and bugles, 
1 bore her, fainting and frightened out of all hope of glory 
for the night, up to her chamber, which l found already 
invaded by a festive crowd, whose chief amusement was 
the examination of every little recess of those shrines in 
which beauty keeps her secrets against the ravages of 
time. 

Dull as my glance was, even I discovered some mys¬ 
teries of the art of perpetual youth, which the last three 
months and a French lady’s maid had communicated to 
my village queen. 

But, to the rustic inquirers round us, $he investigation 
was worth ball and supper put together. Our nearest 
and dearest friends were, as might be concluded, the most 
active in the inquiry ; and I saw, not without some feel¬ 
ing of gladdened justice, the preparations for a whole 
winter’s campaign of renovated and resistless bloom car¬ 
ried off as trophies. 

But my wife’s patience had passed away with her 
fright; and, at the moment when her most confidential 
neighbour iras in the act of developing a French boite of 
the most precious and profound nature, from its blue mo 
rocco, double volumed caissc, letteredpensees surVhomme 3 
in which rouge veritable was the least of the raisdemean 


iO 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


ours, my beloved dashed her way through the laughing 
rabble with the vigour of a bereaved tigress, rent the boitc 
from the meagre figure that with virgin hypocrisy was op 
the very point of appropriating il3 contents for future use, 
and by an energy denied to all but females in despair, 
absolutely fiung the delinquent headlong out of the cham¬ 
ber. I then joined my forces to the conqueror ; the 
defeat became general, !t and the chamber was cleared, but 
cleared like a field of battle ; left covered with the wre6ks 
of all that once glittered there to do mischief to mankind. 

My next inquiry was for my daughters. Emily 1 found 
with her rosy cheeks turned to scarlet by wrath at the 
persecutions of a fellow with a beard down to his middle; 
a learned Brahrnin, who, after plaguing the unhappy girl 
with jargon worthy of his kindred baboons, during the 
evening, had now taken advantage of the crowd to come 
to ''irert language, and make the regular offer of dying at 
her feet. 

The multitude kept me from this philosopher just long 
enough to hear him propose an elopement. Indignation 
left me no power of words, but 1 contrived to do without 
them, i tore my path through a phalanx of dominoes, 
Indian blankets, and Queen Elizabeth fardingales, and 
applied to the learned pundit the same argument which I 
had found so effective with Mr. Ultramarine. He started 
from his knee, and assumed the hero. I grasped his 
beard, brought away his wisdom and his mask together, 
and saw—the Decorator himself! My measures were 
not the less energetic. I gave him new ground for half 
a dozen actions before he reached the head of the stairs. 
How he contrived to reach the bottom, I believe he as I 
little knew as I inquired. 

My sole remaining stake in this lottery of love and riot 
was my stately daughter Caroline. After a long search, 

[ found the beauty of my princess covered with the wrecks 
of her plumage, her cheeks washed with tears, and her 
white hands mottled with paint from the visages of a troop 
of fauns and satyrs who had encircled her, and between 
impudence and revelry, both stimulated by floods of my 
best champaign, were astounding her ears with incanta¬ 
tions worthy of their patron deity, and insulting the 










THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


41 


harrassed girl into manual defence. This, too, I put to the 
route after some effort; and in the midst of roars of 
laughter, carried my unlucky daughter to the chamber 
where her mother and sister sat in sublime repentance, 
and, as they examined their piece-meal drapery, vowing 
irreconcilable resentment against the living world. 

They were not without a speedy revenge upon at least 
a part of it. The chandelier, in whose fall 1 had augured 
the ruin of my house, was destined to be its preservation. 
Some of the tapers had continued to burn. The most 
brilliant and hostile belle of the vicinity was swept in full 
waltz across the spot where one of those lurking incen¬ 
diaries lay smouldering unobserved. Her drapery, almost 
as combustible as herself, touched the taper. The gal¬ 
lant hussar, who, in sabre-tache and moustache unparal¬ 
leled, was whirling away this fond and breathless enthu¬ 
siast with the rapidity of a Catherine wheel, felt too much 
absorbed in the glowing cheek, that, according to the laws 
of the dance, lay melting, like an over-sunned peach, on 
his epauletted shoulder, to think of the world beside. 

But, in this Mahometan moment, the flame laid fast 
hold of its prey; the drapery flamed ; and two whirls of 
the waltz were enough to propagate it through a circle of 
floating frippery on the limbs of twenty belles more. The 
discovery once made, the happy consequences followed in 
an universal scream—a rush to the stairs—an utter disre¬ 
gard of the ties of nature, love, and bienseance—adorers 
flying from the adored—bosom friends trampling on each 
other in the most ruthless spirit of self-preservation—the 
stairs discharging the young, the antiquated, the grave, 
and the gay, without respect of persons, by hundreds into 
the high-road. The sauve quipeut was the grand maxim 
of every one, as much as if they had been a garde imperiale. 

From my elevation on the third story J contemplated 
the havoc with the serenity of Addison’s angel: and 

“ Pleased the village manners to reform, 

Welcomed the whirlwind, and enjoyed the storm.” 

And the storm was doing its duty vigorously. Sheets 
of rain, such as serve tor conversation to the u oldest 




42 the squire's tale. 

inhabitants” of country towns, came down at the crisis* 
serving alike at once for punishment and preservation ; 
extinguishing the conflagration of the draperies and domi¬ 
noes, but visiting their dismantled proprietors with an 
excess of ablution, which, if water could “ wash their 
stains away,” would have left us the purest souled village 
m Christendom. 


CHAPTER VII. 

1 had now gone regularly through a course of getting 
rid of my friends ; and this last experiment made a worthy 
consummation of my plan. For this, too, 1 was to pay, 
Malice had hitherto only dipped its tongue at intervals in 
t r enom ; but now it compounded the draught wholesale, 
and swallowed it in full luxury. 1 have observed that, if 
in cities calumny exists, it is in the country that it flour¬ 
ishes. i he flow of life in towns, like the flow of a river, 
forbids the deposite of the fry. It is in the pond, in the 
btill and tepid stagnation of life, that the scandalous prin¬ 
ciple has time to grow into shape, and fatten for use. 

Every foolery that could pass through the vivid fancy 
jf ancient ladies offering up reputations over their tea¬ 
cups, like the witches of old fumigating people out of 
>cart and brain over their cauldrons ; every insolence that 
could be dreamed over the meagre mess-table of our three 
naif-pay lieutenants, invalided since the siege of Gibraltar, 
and who acted as our oracles in all matters of decorum 
and war ; every pretty impertinence that could glow on 
the pouting lips of all the female hopes of all the village 
ainilies, envious of the good looks and wealth of mv 
daughters * the wrath of the whole world for miles round 
outrageous at the superior equipments of our rout, wild 
as it was, and sorrowing over the common ravage of their 
tiffanies, came conglomerating upon me and mine. 

Anonymous letters of regret, warning, and advice, all 
ol which I ordered to immediate flame, as being always 



THE WOES OP WEALTH. 


43 


the most envenomed trick of petty malice ; toasts and 
tales at village coteries, sure to reach our ears in the pro¬ 
gress of a visit of “friendship” from some “unalterable 
friend paragraphs in a paralytic newspaper, that after 
struggling down to the very verge of the grave, seemed 
to start back into existence on the strength of my unpopu¬ 
larity ; and above all, an endless copy of verses, by a 
muse whose periodic urn, long filled from the lowest ditch 
of Helicon, had been my habitual horror ; all were lavished 
on my naked head, and all f bore, and could have still 
borne with the equanimity of a Socrates under a similar 
discharge, but the verses, which were doggerel, and not 
to be borne by gods or columns, or even by country gen¬ 
tlemen. 

I discovered the author, and found him one of my last 
retainers, the most faithful diner at my table, the echo of 
every rambling sentiment that the genius of claret and 
companionship, such as it was, ever warmed me to utter, 
and pledged to me and mine, with the faith of another 
Pylades, to the final hour in which “ gratitude could beat 
in the pulses of man.” Such had been his literal harangue 
at the very last dinner that l had suffered the slave to enjoy 
under my roof. 

And such was his sincere intention at the time, and for 
all time, while I should have a guinea to lend. But when 
was wisdom the attribute of the muse ? The inspiratimi 
of the subject dazzled him ; immortal fame was in his 
grasp ; and in the determination to eclipse Dryden, and 
rise on the ruins of Churchill at a single spring, he made 
me and mine his theme. 

I walked to his house with his verses in one hand and 
a horsewhip in the other. His surprise would have been 
invaluable to a dramatist. He attempted to deny, to 
explain, and finally to laugh off the affair. I knew where 
•to sting him, and, without reproaching the fellow with 
ingratitude, which he could not have understood, calmly 
told him that his verses were “ utterly contemptible.” The 
sting went to his midriff. 1 held the paper to his eye, and 
asked him if any brute with ears, but one , could ever have 
generated such unequivocal stupidity. I ended by telling 
Sim that, as to personal resentment, I could feel none 



44 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


against such an assailant; but that, as a friend to the 
English language, as a scholar, and a gentleman, I could 
not overlook such an insult to the art of poetry. 

Execution promptly followed, and 1 returned to my 
household gods, with the cheering conviction of having 
cured an erring friend of a delusion that must bring him 
to be the poet of attics and albums; and of having, by an 
application to the human nose, shown the true way of 
vindicating the human ear. 

My expedient made some noise, and relieved me from 
a crowd of open offences already far advanced in prepa¬ 
ration. In three days subsequent, L received notice of 
an action of damages from the fractured son of Parnassus. 
But I had done my country a service worth the money, 
and I was content to suffer whether as a patriot or a martyr. 

We now held another family council. My “ voice was 
for war:” my blood was warmed by battle ; hostilities 
had been fairly commenced ; there was not a man above 
my own groom from whom 1 did not. meet a frowning 
brow. I was within sight of my beloved solitude, the 
trophy that 1 would have sought through ten times the 
hostility'; and only wished, like an old Roman, to lay in 
a stock of provisions, close my gates, and, like him, in fu¬ 
ture to think a stranger synonymous with an enemy. 

But I was overruled again ; the ladies outvoted Sem- 
pronius. The discovery of my wife’s toilet-mysteries, 
which were, after all, only the fantasies of her French 
waiting-woman, whose a-la-modc de Paris soul deemed 
that to live without those little subsidiaries to loveliness 
was to die outright, had made the village a scene of civil 
horror to the companion of my bosom. 

iNever had her round cheek been tipped with cotton or 
camel’s hair, with ribbon dipped in Hungary water, or that 
still sublimer soupgon^ the vegetale , that comes and goes 
with exquisite and periodic delusion. Never had the 
polvoramento —but I shrink from the unhallowed revealing 
of those rights into which, sacred as the mysteries of Isis, 
man can never have made his way but in disguise. 

My own instance, however, was a virtuous exception. 
The seizure of the boite by her most confidential friend, to 
whom my wife, in the innocence of her heart, had shown 


THE WOES OP WEALTH. 


45 


it on its arrival but the day before, was the whole source 
of my knowledge ; and when the victim with tears in her 
eyes protested that she was guiltless of any colour but that 
red and white by nature’s nice and cunning hand laid on, 
I gave her credit for it at sight, on the security of the real 
roses that glowed with double crimson in her cheeks ; and 
sealed my bond with a conjugal kiss, that put them in a 
state to confute the nearest and dearest hater she had in 
the world. 

My counsel was, to proclaim ourselves in a state of siege, 
and scorn and exclude human kind, great and little But 
my wife and daughters stipulated for a month at Bath, to 
give them time to prepare, or for the course of things to 
swallow up the clamour against us. Ii> a month might 
occur one of those grand events which wipe all memorials 
else from the brains of a county ; there might be a new 
parson, or a new stage-coach ; some of the belligerent 
spinsters might be absorbed by marriage, or death might 
do his duty, and relieve the world of them ; Mr. Molasses 
might meet his natural fate by apoplexy ; or the Decorator 
might be hanged ; or the innkeeper's daughter, a prodigous 
blue, might’’concentrate the public talk, and rp.ward her 
parents for her education at a “ superior establishment for 
young ladies,” where “the language of the house was 
French,” by running off with a spruce recruiting corporal, 
retained to give her lessons on the tambourine. 

There was reason in all this; and to reason I always 
submitted. The family coach was forthwith sent to be put 
in travelling order; and, with a lading of live and dead 
stock not much inferior to Squire Wronghead’s, we so¬ 
lemnly left our home, and heavily launched forth on the 
highways of this wicked world. 1 will acknowledge that 
I was not charmed with the decision; but I was a husband 
—the word is an expressive one; and thanking my stars 
that the groanings and heavings of the wheels, springs, and 
axletrees, under the merciless weight that we. laid upon 
them, were more meant in the way of threat than execution, 
I alighted for my sins at the stateliest hotel in the city of 
King Bladud. 

Our first night there was a happy specimen of the future. 
We had arrived in the height of the Bath carnival. The 


46 


THE SQUIRE 5 S TALE. 


hotel was full, running 1 over with West-Indians, members 
of the London clubs, come down, on the demise of the 
London winter, to plunder a little until the period for re¬ 
gular operations returned ; and a double discharge of Irish, 
a fata] result of lowering the fares of the Bristol packets 
without due consideration of the consequences. 

In this state of repletion, to escape sleeping under the 
canopy of heaven—for to be driven to an inferior hotel was 
totally out of the question u with persons of our fortune”— 
was a piece of infinite good luck ; and when the bowing 
landlord, with a thousand protestations of the most exem¬ 
plary sorrow, ushered us up ten pair of stairs along a wild, 
wo-begone, sky-lighted gallery into a suit of damp, half- 
furnished, chili, and dungeon-looking chambers, which 
might have made a capital figure in a romance of the 
u penitents of the Pyrenees,” or the “ black banditti,” my 
female authorities felt, instead of indignation, unequivocal 
gratitude towards our preserver from contact with the 
canaille and comforts of the nameless and unnameablc 
world. 

Yet, with my best inclination to be thankful, I could not 
help revolving the scene that once used to meet my eyes 
at the same hour—the comfort of the fireside, the books, 
the simple easy furniture,the supper-table, neatness itself; 
the look of cheerfulness, not without elegance, that en¬ 
deared every thing in my early home. But as 1 saw that 
my wife and daughters, while we tried to warm ourselves 
over a fire which from want of habit would do any thing’ 
but burn, were involuntarily revolving the very same 
thoughts, I had the merit to hold my tongue; and, some¬ 
what fearing that my powers of retention were not to be 
^ong depended on, I hurried the whole party to repose. 


TIIE WOES OF WEALTH. 


47 


* ■ ' CHAPTER VIII. 

To repose !—they might as well have attempted to sleep 
in a sea-fight. The stately hotel was one of the supreme 
foci of “ rank and fashion.” It had a club and a weekly 
assembly, and on this night a festino , at which “ assisted” 
all the amateur fiddlers, foreign artistes , and figurante 
nondescripts, that lived par leurs talens in the city of the 
arts. The entertainment was the most select thing in the 
annals of Bath : the lady patronesses had exerted them¬ 
selves with Roman rigour and vigour, and had produced 
bickerings innumerable in their resolve to exclude all but 
the perfection of society ; and what a paradisaical foretaste 
did it give me of Bath society, to know that at least a 
thousand registered in those muster-rolls of excellence, 
waltzed, drank, and romped within the walls of the chosen 
hotel! 

I had full time to indulge in the contemplation ; for I 
never closed my eyes but once, and then I was startled by 
a Bacchanalian uproar, that made me in my dizziness think 
for the moment that l was once more in the centre of my 
own masquerade ; but the infinite superiority of the bounc¬ 
ing and bellowing under me soon brought me to mv 
sense?, and I felt that I was in the region of the accom¬ 
plishments, in the central Elysium of the “ elegant ex¬ 
tracts” of man and womankind. 

Morning found me in my meditationand I arose to 
have a glimpse of the world before me. It was extensive 
enough, but monotonous; for my view consisted of the 
tiles and chimney-tops of some myriads of houses. Sky 
there was none ; but it found a substitute in volumes of 
vapour, made picturesque and palatable only by volumes 
of smoke, the whole giving the idea of the steam of a 
gigantic cauldron, in which we were undergoing the boil¬ 
ing process. 

The elevation of our bed-chambers, which were an ex¬ 
crescence on the roof—a kind of airy out-house, or recep 



48 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


tacle suspensory for the waifs and strays which the habit 
able portion of the building rejected—gave me a sensa¬ 
tion of alarm that I determined not to undergo longer than 
I could help. I had no taste for this bird’s-eye view of 
the world ; and descending with what speed I dared, I 
quitted our Mont Blanc, in the full determination never to 
take up my abode in the most fashionable hotel on earth 
again. 

There have been a hundred definitions of man. Of 
woman one is enough she is a route-loving animal 
From a dairy-maid to a* dutchess, the sight of people 
crushing each other, whether within the walls of a barn 
or a palace, is delightful to all her sensibilities. 

The first card that summoned my share of the female 
world to be trampled upon was from the house of an in¬ 
exhaustible old peeress, to whom the Bath physicians 
should have erected statues, if men who live by colds and 
consumptions could be grateful to the chief promoter of 
their fortunes. 

This card effaced every memory of human wrong. 
My wife and daughters went out all bloom, gay as the 
flowers on their heads, and with every pulse beating with 
anticipated triumph. I attended them mdlgre ; was forced 
to work my passage to an obscure corner ; was squeezed 
into an omelet by a phalanx of brazen-faced brawny wo¬ 
men, who drove their way through the tumult like angry 
elephants ; was famished., stunned, thirsty, and tired ; and 
so left to the chances of war, without more consideration 
front any human being than if I had been one of the 
family pictures. 

In my refuge between two candelabra on the flanks, 
and a fierce, full-dressed duchess of enormous size in 
front, I thought of Richelieu’s advice to the courtiers * 
“ Speak ill of nobody ; ask for every thing ; and sit down 
whenever you can.” But the whole art of high-life was 
precluded to me. If all the benevolence that ever drop¬ 
ped from human lip was ready to disguise my irritation 
against the old peeress and her party, I could not play the 
hypocrite at that hour; for to breathe, much more to 
speak, seemed beyond hope. To ask for any thing, if I 
possessed the faculty of speech, was idle ; for beggary 


THE WOES OF WEALTH, 


49 


Xvas the order of the night, and the few trays were way* 
laid at the door by a knot of half-naked harpies, who al¬ 
ternately fought, fed, and flirted the “ sultry hours away 
and as to sitting down, the original seizers of the chairs 
made good prize of them for the full term of the route, and 
would have seen a whole generation of their own godfathers 
and godmothers drop dead at their feet before it would 
occur to them to move a limb. 

Morning came at last, after a night that I thought pro¬ 
tracted beyond all count of time ; and its discoveries 
served me as a sort of revenge. They were tremendous. 
Ovid should have added them as the choicest chapter to 
his Metamorphoses. Youth transformed into age ; skins 
of ivory suddenly emulating orange ; raven locks un* 
screwing their dejected ringlets to show the venerable 
gifts of nature beneath ; and coral lips washed yellow. 

Worn out as I was, scorched, squeezed, and half suffo¬ 
cated, this general dismantling of borrowed charms gave 
me a new knowledge of human nature, and, if 1 had been 
a younger man, would have served me as a useful 'moral 
on the perishable pomps of sublunary skins. I should at 
least have been Bath-beauty proof for ever. 

In this kind of life, for the month, we made battle 
against time, an enemy that yet. defies conquest by man. 
But as the ladies were still in arms, I gave way to neces¬ 
sity, and took vigorously to enjoying all the enjoyments 
. of this citadel of the polite and intellectual. Like all 
things which have long exercised the undivided study of 
man, pleasure here had been reduced to a system, equally 
ingenious, various, and refined. I ran round the whole 
circle. 

In the morning I followed its votaries on their early 
promenade to the Market-place, where, in the midst of 
groups of the idle and invalid, I heard the observations of 
the profound in beef and mutton ; saw the poultry, rab- 
bits, and fish examined with a master-hand; and received 
critical dissertations on prime cuts from miserables that 
had not twelve hours of life in their whole configuration. 

My next indulgence was the Pump-room, where 1 
plunged into a mob of liver-coloured nabobs; frizzled 
mulatto'-visaged men from the sujrar-islands. made, if pos- 
Vol. I .—5 

; y 





50 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


sible, more alarming by cargoes of wives and daughters 
whose features and language would have naturalized them 
in a forest of ourang-outangs ; London tailors come down 
to set the fashions and talk of Almacks ; Spanish and Por¬ 
tuguese fugitives, patriots every soul of them, with visages 
borrowed from their neighbour Africa, and purses borrow¬ 
ed Heaven knows where; French dancing-masters, with 
the croix at their button-holes, and flourishing as counts 
and colonels ; Irish barristers come over to learn English ; 
aldermen of the town, swelling with provincial dignity, 
and irresistible on all questions of law and politics within 
a circle of five miles ; grim incipient physicians, tyro-minis¬ 
ters of the king of terrors, thin men, fed o’ the cameleon’s 
dish, darting about their eager eyes for prey, and pouncing 
through the bilious ranks, like kites over a flock of sick 
sheep ; asthmatic men of ton, castle-spectres, condescend¬ 
ing to offer up the incense of their iast lungs on the altar 
of some sallow daughter of city wealth longing to be a 
countess; plump country baronets, with their plump dames 
dragging their young by whole generations to the pump, 
and forcing physic by the pint on the howling and face¬ 
making victims ; gouty militaires whispering consolation, 
crutch in band, to widows in their weeds ; and last, and 
alone to he pitied, unhappy, homely squires, deluded like 
myself into venturing their souls and bodies into the whirl 
of this vanity fair;—the whole a hubbub of every topic of 
twaddledom from the battle of Bunker’s Hill to the setting 
of a mouse-trap, and the whole carried on under the eter¬ 
nal scraping, twanging, screaming, drumming, and groan¬ 
ing of the most merciless orchestra that ever vilified the 
name of harmony. 

This pleasure being tasted to the full, Milsom-street lay 
before me, where till dinner l was at liberty to enjoy the 
same faces, the same coughs, and the same conversation 
over again,-turn after turn, forty times within the hour, 
until l could wager on the topic that engaged the indivi¬ 
dual at the first sight of him five hundred yards off; and 
could have given a map from memory of every wrinkle on 
the visage of every lovely man-hunter that ranged the hu¬ 
man covert, seeking whom she might devour. 

There were other delights a theatre, into which, as 



THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


5i 


luckily my wife was engaged ten deep every night at card- 
parties, or superintending her girls at quadrilles, I was not 
compelled to chaperon any one, and so utterly escaped- . 
going. The rumour was enough for me; and 1 left the 
reality to the critics, the coffee-house literati, and the 
orange-women, the only class of the three that seemed to 
profit by their attendance on the drama. 

There were conversaziones too, where a dozen fearful 
looking old women, brown as the bonzes that figured on 
their, mantlepiece, and an itinerant lecturer, discussed the 
departed glories of science, in a chamber gloomy as a 
mausoleum, over the worst coffee in Christendom. This 
too I escaped; for my wife had luckily no taste for pyra¬ 
mids or potsherds, was ignorant as Eve of all chemistry 
and mathematics, and would have as so'on committed the 
sin of witchcraft as dandled the mummy of the great 
Psammeticus himself. 

But a grand event was on the point of coming to my 
succour. I had given up remonstrance, and waited in 
faith and patience for the work of Time, that great unfeed 
doctor, who cures more diseases than the whole College 
of Physicians put together, and gives saving lessons where 
all other moralists since Confutzee would have preached 
in vain. 

Yet Time, if a sure auxiliary, is a tardy one, and to my 
great regret I saw this perpetual whirl of song and supper 
wearing out the spirits of my girls, and nightly rubbing the 
roses off their young cheeks. All our virtues are said to 
have their kindred vices. My high-souled Caroline was 
teaching her black eyes to conquer in all directions, and 
in a month more I should have had her a supreme coquette; 
my delicate Emily was indulging her blue eyes with down¬ 
cast triumph, and was on the point of turning out as pretty 
a prude as ever loved a flirtation. 

I determined to take my departure forthwith, and try 
the effect of a country regimen on the family understand¬ 
ing. As to the fading complexions, the remedy was so 
near at hand, that 1 dared not touch on the topic, for fear 
of seeing the general expedient adopted wiUiout cere¬ 
mony. 







/. 


THE SQUIREV TALE 
4 


CHAPTER IX. 

While i was deliberating on the safest mode of hinting 
my wishes, I was startled by the arrival of a huge letter, 
in the old formality of black seal and mourning edges, 
which had hitherto so often given me a fit of nervousness.. 
Now, however, 1 soon got over my panic. I had warred, 
or been warred on by every “friend” I possessed in the 
world. I now acknowledged the genuine advantage of 
living a second Esau among mankind ; and, without a 
lingering fear of being touched in the person of any human 
being, 1 boldly broke up the missive of mortality. 

The news within was an example of the proverb, that 
good or evil seldom comes alone. The death of one 
uncle, whom I had seen but once, bad lifted me into 
opulence ; the death of another uncle, whom I had never 
seen at all, was now to lift me higher than I could have 
dreamed. 

He was an old, bitter Yorkshire baronet, who, after dis¬ 
owning my father for marrying the beauty of his choice, 
had, to show his superior taste, set his scullion at the head 
of his table. But as his pride forbade any ceremony on 
the occasion, and the fracture of his neck on the edge of 
a double ditch at the age of three-score and ten extinguish- 
cd the alliance, his manor, money, and title, fell upon the 
last head that he had contemplated, or that had even de> 
sired them among mankind. • 

The news, however, had one real good ; for it decided 
our instant return, in my wife’s judgment, the idea of 
remaining to mingle as a baronet’s lady in the same circle 
which had received her untitled, was preposterous beyond 
all precedent The world of the plebeians and ten-thou- 
‘sands a year was a totally different, world from that of the 
“ hereditary titles” and thirty thousands a year. I ac¬ 
quiesced in the conclusion, if the reasoning did not con¬ 
vince me ; and when from the first slope of the road ! 
looked back on the hot, vapoury, watery coverlid of the 


the woes or wealth. 


53 


huge human bed that filled the valley, and thought of the 
paralytic, nightmarish, and parboiled multitude melting 
below, I found that, whatever mischiefs there might be in 
thirty thousand a year, l was, for the hour, almost a happy 
man. 

'i'he grand question on our return was, whether we 
should not abandon our old locale altogether, commence 
the world in a new region, and start for the mansion in 
Yorkshire. My voice was for the emigration,. I had 
already felt some of the evils of living rich where I had 
lived poor ; and 1 was fully disinclined to add to their 
number. But once again ! was overruled. My excellent 
wife, if she scorned to own that she had injuries to avenge, 
had, as she observed, u prejudices to rectify.” I could 
have subjoined, that she had triumphs to enjoy. The 
Molasses faction were to be utterly routed ; and as for the 
virgin plunderer or plunderers of the toilet, they were to 
be withered into ashes by our exclusive blaze. 

By a curious and unlucky coincidence, a part of my 
late acquisition was in a large extent of land adjoining the 
village. New duties thus came crowding on the u baronet 
and great landed proprietor,” of which the quiet dweller 
in the squire’s cottage would have escaped the whole 
trouble, and in which I was to go from bad to worse by 
the course of nature. 

There were two classes of the hangers-on upon society 
for whom I had always felt a sort of lazy compassion, the 
smuggler and the poacher. I am not defending either of 
them ; but perhaps the reckless intrepidity and rough haz¬ 
ards of both had some influence on me. They were at 
least not made more criminal in mv estimation by the 
ineradicable insolence of custom-house officers, and the 
capricious absurdity of rigid game-preservers. In fact, I 
had never dissembled my opinions on the battue genera¬ 
tion, who reckon their prowess by slaughtering game as if 
they shot them in a coop, and destroy in a day more than 
all the poachers of a province steal in a year. 

But 1 was now the “ lord of the manor,” the dispenser 
of the law, the u great standard of morals” for the village 
environs, and I must not wink at the breaches of the 







bl 


THE saying’s TALE, 


statutes made for preserving partridges and the duty on tea 
and tobacco. 

For the partridges I had never cared ; and for the cart, 
of the revenue, I had thought that the nation paid hand¬ 
somely enough without enlisting the country gentlemen 
into its service. But l had now parted with the happy 
privileges ol'tlie obscure ; I was now a man 44 looked up 
to a personage whose example, as the twaddlers, in a 
body, pronounced it, was 41 pregnant with good or evil” to 
the country. 

I accordingly seized a whole posse of depredators on 
mv game ; saw the poor devils sent to jail; received the 
applauses of the bench of magistrates the next day ; re¬ 
ceived its counterbalance in my own regrets ; spent three- 
hundred pounds in their liberation ; and, the bounty being 
of course secret, had the double benefit of being cursed by 
the peasantry far and near as a purse-proud tyrant, and 
being sneered at by every man who envied my sudden for¬ 
tunes, as 44 an upstart attempting to catch the eye oi 
government bv over-zeal, and ignominiously defeated in 
his awkward enterprise.” 

But I had troubles to which this was a mole-hill. My 
wife’s visit to Bath had touched her with a new sense of 
the necessity of foreign elegance to English perfection; 
and the most accomplished tmigree that Baris ever polish¬ 
ed luckily dropped in her way at the moment when she 
was in absolute despair of seeing her daughters ever pos¬ 
sess the true flow of a language so essential to their ex 
istence as French. 

The introduction had been managed with diplomatic 
dexterity by a lady of the first fashion ; who, 1 had good 
subsequent reason to believe, received fifty pounds from 
each party for her share in a negotiation of such exquisite 
difficulty. 

We brought our invaluable treasure home with us, and 
rejoiced in a tutoress, or rather in 44 an interesting friend,” 
who would soon smooth u§ into such shining specimens 
of society, that our rustic neighbours would not dare to 
lift their dazzled eyes where we trod. 

The emigree was pretty, and she had a pretty story, 
which she disclosed to the heads of the house under the 


TI1JG WOES OF WEALTH. 


55 




^ most solemn seal of secrecy,” and with some as 
“prettily produced tears as I ever saw glitter on a long 
silken eyelash. “ She was”—and the sigh that sent 
forth the tale was accompanied with an attesting upthrown 
glance of the dewy black eye, that none but a Goth or a 
Hun could dare to disbelieve. 

u She was the daughter, the only and beloved daughter,” 
of a marquis of immense revenues, who, alas! fell a 
victim to his loyalty in the early stage of the revolution. 
He died in the army of Conde, after performing prodigies 
of valour, and bequeathing his infant Cassandre-Stephanie- 
Armide-St. Ange to the care of his illustrious leader. 
Attached from her birth to the royal cause, the most 
magnificent offers from Napoleon himself could not tempt 
her to remain under his atrocious dynasty. “ Plutot perh\ 
plutot perir exclaimed the pretty ultra, with an attitude 
worthy of Duchesnois. She had vowed to devote her life 
to the sublime revenge of imbuing English genius with the 
accomplishments of France, and thus depriving her un¬ 
grateful country of the only laurel whose loss would be 
irreparable. 

To resist the conviction of such tears from such eyes was 
impossible. My two tall girls were instantly sent to drill. 
Their old acquirements were flung aside like $!d clothes. 
A new course of canzonets and concertantes, readings 
from Rousseau, and recitations from Voltaire, were the 
order of the day. Ariosto reposed upon the toilet, and 
the Pastor Fido lay the tender companion of the pillow ; 
and when, after a fortnight’s absence at my Yorkshire 
manor, I returned, I could scarcely know my own flesh 
and blood in the two operatic divinities that shrank from 
the horrors of an “ accueil” so threatening as mine, to 
their machinery of French flowers, fronts d-la Valiere , and 
flounces d-la the deuce knows who. 

But I had no time to display my wrath on the subject; 
my attention was drawn to another visitor. It was six 
months since I had sent my son to Oxford, a handsome, 
healthy, and intelligent youth as any in the-land. He had 
of course shared in the family prosperity, and where my 
remittances cautiously paused, his mother's secret gene¬ 
rosity made ample recompense. Between us, we might 
as well have sent him as many doses of arsenic. 






56 


THE SQUIRE'S TALE. 


In my misbelieving presence stood a sickly visaged rake, 
an exhausted emblem of supreme elegance, ringleted and 
mustaelied like a German mountebank, with a cigar puff¬ 
ing from his lips into my face, and a cheek sallow with late 
hours and dissipation. 

Holding out to me, as I gazed in speechless astonish¬ 
ment, a finger loaded with rings, he, in some jargon, half 
French, half English, condescended to acknowledge me. 

I broke from him, and from all, and rushed to my chamber 
to give vent to feelings which I dared not show to my 
alienated household. 

I spent the rest of that day alone, and in a bitterness of 
heart that might have made the beggar at my gate rejoice 
in his nakedness. My son undone; my daughters per¬ 
verted into puppets and dolls; my wife’s honest head 
turning in the general whirl of fashion and foolery ;—if a 
wish from the bottom of my soul could have sent my 
estates flying through the air, and set me down on my' 
quiet competence again, l should that night have been 
the possessor of five hundred pounds a year, and not a 
shilling more. 

But freedom is not the privilege of men “ of my sta¬ 
tion.” I found on my table a notice that I had been 
u most graciously appointed by His Majesty to the impor¬ 
tant and honourable office of high sheriff for the county 
and the next morning had scarcely dawned when I was 
instructed that the assizes were about to begin, and that I 
must attend the triumphal entry of their worships the 
judges. 

I loathed this scene of rustic bustle; but where was 
my resource ? “ Public buisness must be done by public 

men.” I submitted, like one going to the block. 

A miserable week was spent in a perpetual tumult of 
preparation ; and while my showy carriages, horses, jave¬ 
lin-men, and dinners only laid up a store of bile in the 
bosoms of every predecessor whose finance might less 
afford the necessary display, I could have wished the whole 
ceremony at the bottom of the ocean. 

My early practice in Jurisprudence had not reconciled 
me to her shrine ; and what kind of votary was I likely to 
be now, after a life of seclusion, and, at the present mo 




THE WOES OF WEALTH, 


0 4 


rnent, with enough of my own business on my hands 
Perplexed in head, nervous in heart, and wearied in frame, 
1 was urged through a period of clamour, feast-giving, 
mob-marshalling, and, to close the whole with the fitting 
ceremony, it was my duty to preside at the only execution 
that had happened for years among us. 

With the feeling of a felon released from his irons, f 
saw the judges take their departure. 1 certainly never 
before had a proper sense of the sacrifices to which patri¬ 
otism, or the love of power, or the prospect of knight 
hood, annually prompts so many worthy gentlemen. 


CHAPTER X. 


But fortune had malice still in reserve. The leading 
county member, as handsome, florid, and fox-hunting a 
legislator as any that ever sat mute in the House of Com¬ 
mons, suddenly transported beyond his usual stint of three 
bottles of claret by the enthusiasm of having carried off" 
the brush, fell from his seat with the sixth bottle in his 
hand, and deserted the table, this life, and the representa¬ 
tion together. 

I shuddered instinctively at the sight of the three mud- 
covered post-chaises that came with the intelligence, gal¬ 
loping pver every thing in the streets of the miserable 
assize-town, where I sat in fierce formality, envying every 
egg-and-butter-woman that drove her donkey by the court- 
door. 

The prognostic was true. The fatal post-chaises 
brought a deputation of my “ particular friends, and the 
particular friends of my family,” requesting me, u in the 
name of public feeling, personal dignity, and the free and 
independent electors of the true-blue interest—trampled 
so long by a faction—the prey of a vicious and insolent 
oligarchy—sold from hand to hand at the caprice of half a 
dozen great families, and saddled with inveterate boobies., 
such as their late member,—to stand for the county,” 





58 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


I never took less time to make up my mind on any sub¬ 
ject under the sun. I gave, on the spot, the plainest nega¬ 
tive that man could give. 

The deputation were supremely astonished ; “ the dis¬ 
tinction was so honourable, the service rendered to the 
country so essential, their own feelings so much alive on 
the occasion, and, finally, the return so unequivocally se¬ 
cure. They would and could take no denial.” But 1 
was firm ; and we parted with mutual solemnity. 

I had a couple of hours more to spend in court. They 
were not lost by my good friends. Before l could step 
half a yard into the street, rejoiced to be divested of my 
official toils, and hoping to glide away to my beef-steak 
in private virtue, I found that publicity was to be the 
badge of all my tribe. I was surrounded, congratulated, 
and complimented by the whole population on “ my ac¬ 
ceptance of the offer.” 

The principal Boniface solicited me, in person, to do 
him the honour of making his house the head-quarters of 
the true-blue.” All the post-boys of the town clamoured 
round me, whip in hand, and only longed to have the ho¬ 
nour of bringing up u my honour’s friends.” The horns 
of the Bald-faced Stag, on the other side of the way, wore 
the true-blue in rivalry of the pile of ribands, of equal 
azure, that decorated the Red Lion. My retreat was cut 
off by a posse of the prettiest milliners of the town, each 
showing her superior dexterity in the art of making ro¬ 
settes. I fell into an ambush of all the elite of our youth 
and beauty, already contemplating the balls and banquets 
of an election, and the marriages sprouting therefrom ; and 
while I was brought to a dead stand by the attempt to say 
something to every body, and the impossibility of saying 
any thing to the purpose, I was seized by main force by 
an irruption from the “ grand hotel,” consisting of the 
same gentlemen whose offer 1 had already rejected, but 
who, as they avouched, u knowing my own mind better 
than myself, and accustomed to expect such answers, in the 
first instance, from men of talent and delicacy, had ordered 
a dinner for the purpose of giving me time to re-consider 
the matter cbblly with my friends.” 

Human nature, good and bad, is a curious study. If 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


had long been mine ; and, unluckily, the present scene 
tempted me as a new scrap for my mental portfolio. No 
evil could follow from my dining along with those good- 
natured boobies. My anti-parliamentary determination 
had been too firmly fixed to give way ; I was, beside, hun¬ 
gry and tired ; I loved society ; I loved a good song; had 
no dislike to a bottle of such claret as I knew my host of 
the “ grand hotel ” could produce on particular occasions ; 
and thus tempted and fortified, I rashly suffered myself to 
be escorted to the head of the table. 

The history of all public dinners is much the same : a 
succession of prescriptive toasts drunk in vile wine, and 
moved, seconded, and re seconded, in oratory worthy of 
the wine. In the metropolis things are bad enough ; but 
there the process has by habit been licked into some form. 
The established orators talk the established nonsense, and 
the affair is over. 

But my jovial constituents were children of nature ; and 
before our second bottle had fairly gone its round, we were 
all orators together. The fact that they could utter three 
consecutive sentences was new to most of them; and the 
bourgeois gentil homme was never more astonished or more 
delighted at the discovery that he could talk prose. 

We had for hours together the enjoyment of this expe¬ 
rimental oratory, with ail its alarms at 41 addressing so dis¬ 
tinguished an assemblage;’' its u consciousness of utter 
incompetenceand its wish that “so elevated a duty as 
that of proposing the health of Mr. Alderman Topsyturvy, 
&,c. should have fallen on some member more adequate ” 
to a task of such overwhelming magnitude. 

When it came to my turn, 1 made the sort of harangue 
that a man generally makes when he is fantastic enough to 
expect to think of carrying two contradictory purposes at 
once. Every syllable that went to thank the general 
civility of the assemblage was taken for a direct consent, 
i which the firmest negation could not wash away. My 
occasional expressions of that good-will which goes for 
nothing in the presence of the bottle, were seized and 
shouted over as admissions and concessions, as the strong 
facts of the case, which nothing but challenging the whole ' 
deputation on the spot could have torn from their souls. 







60 


xiie squire’s tale. 


The wine whirled faster and faster, and the general 
brain whirled like the wine. Songs starting up from vol¬ 
unteer performers in all quarters, the most desperate ex¬ 
periments of throats to which nature had denied all voice 
beyond a tally-ho ; more harangues, more pledges and 
protestations, more roarings, more wine, rapidly exhila¬ 
rated us into a state fit for talking equally well upon all 
subjects, legal, religious, and political. 

What I said in my several speeches after twelve o’clock, 
t, as a conscientious man, will not be very resolute in as¬ 
serting. 

But whatever it was, it was received with an applause 
that might have done honour to a Demosthenes. I be¬ 
lieve I went over several theories of church and state ; 
discussed the finances in a style of matchless elucidation : 
intrepidly quoted my school Latin ; condemned or pane¬ 
gyrised the war, I forget which ; laid down a new system 
of representation, reform, and chimney-sweeping by ma¬ 
chines ; pledged rnyself to live and die for the country, 
whether in or out of parliament, which was received with 
a thunder of applause; and while I was between the sink¬ 
ing fund and the supply of London with fresh water, 
dropped down into my seat, from which 1 unostenta¬ 
tiously slipped upon the squire-strewn floor. 

Morning glared in upon me fevered, headached, and 
with the remnants of my oratory still rolling through my 
puzzled brains. But my uncertainty was not to be long- 
lived. The deputation waited on me while I was lazily 
trying to remember where 1 was. They brought a paper 
loaded with signatures, at the head of which was my own. 

At what hour of the carousal, or in what state of my 
understanding, this document was procured, I could not. 
tell for my soul. But there I was ; the litera scripta had 
jne fast, pledged to “redeem the independence of the 
country too long shackled by an odious oligarchy,” and 
the rest in very legitimate style. 1 remonstrated in vain : 
—there was the indelible witness. 

I at length grew angry at what 1 felt to be a deception 
of some kind or other ; and ilatly telling my excellent 
friends that they must look for their representative some¬ 
where else, ordered my horse, and to their utter surprise. 


THE WOES OS' WEALTH. 


m 

^eft town, deputation, and the glory of the true-blue, ten 
miles behind me within the half hour. 

I pulled up on reaching a hill which overlooked my 
fiouse, and, as my blood cooled along the ascent, sank 
into the usual meditations of a repentant bacchanal. 

My meditations had nearly cost me my neck. The 
burst of a rocket over my horse put the animal to his 
•speed; and nearly unseated, and not undeserving the 
honours of John Gilpin, 1 was whirled through our long 
and crooked street, bursting my way among a screaming 
and shouting multitude, till my steed stopped at the ac¬ 
customed door. 

The shouts followed me still. They were echoed from 
a circle of country fellows come to “drink his honour’s 
health, and success to his election.” My footmen made 
their appearance half drunk with their early libations to 
the same glorious cause ; and the wife of my bosom re 
ceived me in the hall, cerulean from top to toe, and with 
a pretty, half-jealous speech on my having so dexterously 
concealed from her “ my noble intention of setting up for 
the countv.” 

I am afraid that 1 did not behave like a philosopher on 
this speech ; for the style of my reply brought tears into 
eyes that 1 never wished to see shaded ; and discord and t 
dismay raised their voices through the household when 1 
ordered my solitary meal to my study. 

But I might as well have stopped the Thames at full 
tide, as curb the sudden friendship with which the county 
honoured me. The emissaries who had conveyed the 
intelligence of my “canvass” home, had lost no time in 
spreading the glad tidings far and wide. The seed pros¬ 
pered into a rapid harvest, and for a month to eome 1 
had not an hour unmolested by deputations, personal in¬ 
quiries, men of “county weight” riding over to point out 
where the press of battle lay; and whole caravans of 
jocund matrons and spinsters crowding in from the re¬ 
motest corners of the province, to ascertain the proba¬ 
bility of their figuring at our convivialities. 

Vol. 1.—6 




62 


THE SQUIEE’s TALE. 


CHAPTER XI. 

No man knew the history of all this love better than 
myself. Our paramount duke, a frigid and penurious 
aristocrat, whose touch, as the London wits said, luckily 
saved him the expense of ice for his wine, had hitherto 
settled the representation in his own way. Nothing could 
be more tranquil, and less satisfactory. 

The noble duke avowed that this was done “ to pre¬ 
serve the peace of the county.” The whole inferior race 
of existences declared that, the plain English of the 
peace-preservation was to make an easy government- 
bargain for himself, to get places for his haughty progeny, 
and, blackest of all, to “ starve the poor innkeepers.” 

The idea of losing the opportunity of starting a new 
man with ready money enough to make the million drunk, 
and with that undisguised opinion of the ducal proceed¬ 
ings which would make compromise with His Grace im¬ 
possible, was not to be given up without horror. I well 
knew that, to plunder me, and to stimulate the great man, 
were the genuine objects of this sudden enthusiasm for 
my talents and virtues. 

Years had elapsed since the sweets of office had been 
known in our community. Not a commission in a Ja¬ 
maica regiment—not an Indian cadetship—not a sur¬ 
geoncy in a slave-hospital—not a Clerkship in Canada, 
fell among our luckless population ; not a bone of ours 
was among the King of Ashantee’s drumsticks, nor a 
drop of our blood was turned into fire under the sky of 
Sierra Leone. All the favours were reserved for a county 
a hundred miles off, where His Grace had to struo-o-le 

C5 © 

with a balanced interest. We were basely secure ; and 
we scandalously paid the penalty of this submission by 
being shut out from the delights of pestilence, diseased 
liver, broiling alive, and water within a stone’s throw of 
the pole. 


THE WOES OP WEALTH. 


63 


No wonder that we should have wished to see this atro¬ 
cious system of partiality changed, cost, what it might. 
Yet I was determined to disappoint them ail ; and no form 
of language could be more distinct than my steady refusal 
to assist our young farmers in getting their lives shorten¬ 
ed, out of their own country. 

I looked with an iron eye on the hardships of men 
earning health, comfort, and character in our obscure 
community, when they might have been gloriously perish¬ 
ing of arrack, miasrna, and every debauchery and disease 
under the stars, ten thousand miles off. 1 had even the 
hardihood to express my belief that nine-tenths of the 
voters knew no more, and could know no more, of the 
qualifications of a member of parliament, and cared no 
more about them, if they did. than the .pigs they drove. 

But let no man be too sure of his resolution. My 
daughters returned in tears from a ball given by a patri¬ 
cian in our neighbourhood ; mv wife returned in sublime 
indignation. They had come in contact with His Grace 
and the duchess, now awakened to the necessity of a 
little looking after their own interests. His Grace Jet fall 
his stony eye upon them, and gazed as if he was gazing 
on the weed under his own lordly feet. But woman has 
more direct ways of expressing her opinions. The little 
etiquettes of dancing were forced to give w'ay to the im¬ 
petuous duchess ; a belle proud as Lucifer, and arrived 
at that fated time of life when the beauty car. be a beauty 
no longer, and the delights of supremacy must be looked 
for in some other mode. 

Arrogance was the one chosen by Her Grace ; and the 
contrast between her own sullen and swarthy offspring, 
and the rosy and animated faces of my untitled girls, en¬ 
venomed the point of the haughty lady's displeasure. 

A series of petty insults that none but women can con¬ 
struct or feel, made their evening miserable. Every 
puppy in attendance on the ducal groupe was commis¬ 
sioned to level his eye-glass at them ; whispers of fashion¬ 
able scorn passed from ear to ear in discussing their cos¬ 
tumes ; their places were usurped in right of the superior 
rank of the usurpers ; and one of the dilettanti loungers 
of the circle occupied his leisure in making a pencil-sketch 




THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


U 

of their quadrille, which he handed round amid the unre¬ 
strained applause of the “ select circle.” 

“ Human nature,” as my wife pouted out the story. 
4 ‘ could hear it no longer.” The mother flamed in her 
breast, and she at length gave Her Grace a public opinion 
of her proceedings, in language so little capable of being 
misunderstood, that the high-born < ‘fl'ender reddened deeper 
than her rouge, and in furious indignation fled the room. 
My wife marched over the field in triumph ; and then 
returned to weep and disburden herself of the insult, in 
the shape of an absolute demand, that I should shake 
this insolent set out of the representation.” 

Every animal has his weak side; and I was here 
attacked on mine. Five minutes earlier, I could have 
sworn myself superior to any form of ratiocination ti*t 
ever melted down the purposes of man. 1 felt myself 
dipped in the Styx of impenetrability ; but the shaft found 
me at last. 

Contempt in mv own person I might have answered by 
contempt; but riot Cyrus the Great, nor any duke in the 
land, should dare to hurt a hair of the head I loved. 

I now wanted no stimulant. All the curtain lectures 
that ever worried the marital ear could not have found me 
more suddenly obedient to my domestic sovereign. In 
fact, my family, now alarmed by the complete result of 
their application, like children startled at letting off their 
own fireworks, wasted more eloquence to cool than they 
had done to inflame me. 

On this occasion 1 take no credit to myself; I will 
acknowledge that I behaved like a fool ; for my first per¬ 
formance was a note to the duke, demanding his promptest 
explanation of the insult, which, upon second thoughts, I 
had found it by no means a matter of ease to define. 
However, away went the letter, like a bomb, to fall with 
what havoc it might. For three days 1 received no 
answer 1 . - 

As 1 never was in the militia, I may be allowed to say, 
without imputation on my soldiership, that those three 
days were by no means the most soothing of my career. I 
had, in a fit of rage, done a thing which might, in the 
• winkling of an eye, involve every one 1 cared for in miserv. 



THE WOES OP WEALTH. 


65 


If I went the way of all duellists, what was to become 
of those for whom I had run my head into the noose ? 
My property was still disarranged ; my expenses had 
hitherto prevented my making any sufficient provision for 
the females of my household ; and they must be left to 
the mercy of a spendthrift and giddy boy, already, I had 
reason to fear, deeply encumbered, and, by his dissipation, 
worn out as much in health as in purse ; while at his 
death the property must go to a distant line. 

The innumerable projects of personal and public good 
which I had long occupied myself in forming, must all be 
extinguished. Still higher considerations, however I 
laboured to repel them from my mind, pressed upon me ; 
and, when I thought of the mischiefs that had been done 
in my case, and in a million of others, by the unhappy 
facility of putting the mind on paper, I began to think 
that the prohibition of pen and ink to prisoners was, 
instead of an act. of severity, an act of provident tender¬ 
ness. It was taking away the claws that the captive, 
infuriated by his chain, would have used only to tear his 
own flesh. 

My shooting His Grace, though l own I should have 
had much less compunction in that turn of the catastrophe, 
yet might be attended with its discomforts too. What 
right had I to go through the world making widows and 
orphans, however the one might be as proud as Lucifer, 
and the other likely to inherit the insolence and impudence 
of their parentage on both sub s ? The connexion, besides* 
was large, was round me, and must feel itself arrayed in 
perpetual wroth. I bitterly repented of my‘defiance. 

However, it was now too late to retract ; arid as no 
apology had made its appearance by the close of the third 
day, I concluded that war was resolved on, and began to 
make the due preparations. I took down my pistols, old 
idlers, that had hung in primeval rust for twenty years 
over the mantle piece of my bed-chamber ; gave a long 
and perhaps a melancholy inspection to their pans and 
flints ; and, as l snapped them, moralized on the perverted 
dexterity of man. 

The night passed slowly away, and I had a full oppor¬ 
tunity of enjoying with a critic’s eye the exquisite growth 

6 * 


66 


THE SQUIRE’S TALZ> 


of the dawn, from its streak of purple to its sheet of scar¬ 
let, with all its other beauties. For my eye never closed ; 
and I have seldom discovered that any man slept better, 
as dawned the day when he was to be shot at. 

“ And this, ” soliloquised I, “is the work of my money ! 
If 1 had been left as I was, I could have enjoyed every 
thing about me with as much zest as if I were worth the 
rental of England. On my five hundred a year I should 
have gone on like a philosopher, undisturbed by the world ; 
I should have been suffered to follow my natural tastes, 
without any man’s caring sixpence what 1 did. Neither 
long dinners would have tired out my soul, nor late drink¬ 
ings disturbed my understanding I should never have 
been condemned to hear long speeches, nor worse, to make 
them. I should not have seen my house turned inside 
out, nor my family turned outside in ; the minds of my 
sweet girls stuffed with silver lame , crepe a la Reine , and 
satin-stitch ; and my dear wife harassed to death with dis¬ 
putes about precedency, or capable of any other ambition 
than that of having the earliest cucumbers and cream- 
cheeses in the county. 

“ I should have been neither sheriff nor politician. 1 
should, too, at this balmy hour, when every bud is spangled 
with diamonds, more glittering than the five thousand 
pounds necklace on the brown neck of the haggard Prin¬ 
cess of Fauxpasski, have been walking bareheaded in the 
gentle sun, without fear of gunpowder ; filling my frame 
with the b eath of flowers and fruits, and listening to the 
warble of my larks and black-birds, instead of counting, 
fike a malefactor, the chimes of that funereal village 
steeple, whose sound makes me sick, and which, before 
dinner-time this very day, may be ringing out for mv finale. 
And all this comes of having had two old rich beasts of 
uncles, and being, as every one declares, the most fortu¬ 
nate man alive.” 

The morning lingered on with that wormy length which 
gives the idea of never making way ; until, in fierce im¬ 
patience, I sent my “ friend”—such are the services of 
friendship among the wise of our time—to insist on His 
Grace’s presence in the field. My envoy came back at 
Till gallop; I saw him miles of!' with an acuteness of 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


67 


vision that might have been envied by sister Anne on the 
top of Bluebeard’s tower I received him in private ; he 
put a note into my hand with a look of great displeasure. 
It was from His Grace, " lamenting that the necessity of 
immediate attendance on his parliamentary duty must 
deprive him for the present of the honour I had intended 
him.” 

His Grace, Her Grace, caricaturists, and coterie, had 
gone off the evening before. My second expressed the 
sort of wrath that a sportsman might, who saw a covey 
wing off before he could bring the gun to his shoulder. 
I was, on the contrary, never better pleased in the course 
of my life. The difference of our feelings is, perhaps, to 
be accounted for by my being principal, and his being 
second. 


CHAPTER XII. 

Continued good luck may harden a man, but an acci 
dental turn of the cards in his favour has rather a tendency 
to soften him. I no sooner found that I was not to be his 
frigid Grace’s executioner,nor to die by his hand, than my 
general hostility to the ducal interests thawed away I 
repented me of the wife-extorted promise to stand for the 
county at all risks, and would have been charmed to back 
out of the honour of representing the lives and fortunes of 
i so many better and hungrier men than myself. 

But as I cooled, the domestic privy council, the para¬ 
mount authority who fulminated their decrees from my 
lady’s boudoir, grew more ardent; until the virtuous 
minority, assailed by a new impulse, surrendered to a pro¬ 
vocation which inflamed both sides of the house alike. 

My neighbour the sugar-baker, an honest, pudding¬ 
headed fellow, who loved a good dinner better than the 
three estates ot the legislature, had the misfortune of being 
trampled on by as tierce a vigaro as ever terrified a 
husband. 





88 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


Early deficiencies of education, which, as our sexton, 
the wit of the parish, said, “ destined him for a man of 
mark” had niadeJVlolasses bow his purse-pride before my 
superior scholarship, of which his idea was unbounded. 
He was a dunce of the most solid description, with a busi¬ 
ness worth fifty thousand a year, in right of which he had 
a dozen peers and peeresses at his London table whenever 
he took the trouble to ask them. 

Molasses and I had long been on tolerable terms; but 
our paradise was about to be invaded by the old tempta¬ 
tion, the love of a step upwards, and through the old me¬ 
dium, a woman. The apple for which Molasses endan¬ 
gered the general peace was a baronetcy, and the original 
tiiirster after this dangerous fruit was his wile. 

He hated commotion of any kind, and long declined the 
honour. But domestic commotion was closer to his feel¬ 
ings than foreign, and the fear of declaring hostilities 
against me was extinguished in the greater fear of daring to 
call his soul his own before the sharer of his pillow. 

The duke was a potential person at Whitehall; he nomi¬ 
nated six conscientious legislators, whom a twirl of his fin¬ 
ger could send from one side of the house to the other % 
and influenced six more, who had that true political grati¬ 
tude, k ‘ the sense of favours to come.” Frigid as he was, 
he could be warm in a job. His present performances 
were expeditious, and the same post brought down the 
patent announcing the sugar-baker to he Sir Mungo for 
all future ages,.and His Grace s - recommendation ” to all 
and several his agents, and so forlh. and to return the new 
baronet as a good man and true for the shire. 

A whole army of the ladies of the true blue ” waited 
instantly on mv wife, to represent this new candidateship 
as the most intolerable act of baseness, ingratitude, and 
malice within the memory of man, or woman, which is 
perhaps not the worst pickle of such things. Lady Mo¬ 
lasses, on the other hand, in the joy of her new rank, was 
not slow in giving reality to the imaginary wrong ; and 
under the direction of my wife, aided by volunteer wrath 
and wisdom from all the females of her acquaintance, to it 
we went. 

The election went on in the way of all elections. Both 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


69 


i 


the candidates, pigeons plucked to the last feather that the 
voters could lay a finger on ; the “ independent electors,’’ 
to a man, contriving how they could make the most oi 
their opportunities; canvassers and counsel filling their 
pockets from both sides; and the free and enlightened 
mob deciding on the virtues and talents of the parties by 
the quality of our ale. To do Sir Mungo justice, he had 
the good sense to see where his strength lay ; and by the 
confession of every footman even under my own roof, his 
liquor was of the highest order of public principle. 

But I had some advantages still His Grace was as ob¬ 
noxious as any man must be who was richer than three- 
fourths of the county ; who gave dinners that made the 
multitude of the squires’ ladies hang down their heads in 
shame; and who, besides, gave them but once in six 
months. A long train of similar insults, not dead, but 
-sleeping, started up in the public memory on the first occa¬ 
sion of revenge. The ladies tasked their gratitude in vain 
to discover an instance in which His Grace had led oft 
with any one of them at the assize-ball ; the gentlemen 
had their wrongs on the score of the rigid preservation of 
hares and pheasants ; and the mob swore wrath against 
the man from u'hom neither joy nor sorrow, neither bell- 
ringing and bonfires, nor fever and famine, could extract 
a sixpence. 

The wrath fell reduplicated on the head of Sir Mungo, 
as at once a safer subject, and offending the pride of the 

! squiredom by taking a flight above their ancient glories, 
and throwing their tarnished coach panels into utter 
eclipse by the glittering honours of the “ bloody hand.” 
f too was not idle. Having once been fool enough to 

I entangle myself in this squabble, I determined at least not 
to lose the victory by my own indolence. This, I admit, 
was but adding one absurdity to another. But Homer 
sleeps now and then, and Solomon himself was not always 
a sage. I gathered up my old acquirements, and became 
a speech-maker. Twenty years—twenty happy years, 
had flown on wings of eider-down since 1 had disturbed 
the echoes with a longer harangue than to bid my frieze- 
coated gargon light iny studv candles, or bring my horse 

li V - . 






70 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 


But the bar, if it teach nothing else, teaches us to have no 
fear nor feeling of the face of man. 

If the monk’s receipt for eloquence was, to consider his 
congregation but so many heads of cabbage ; the barrister 
finds the secret in the profession which enables him to 
consider, or to make, the heads of cabbage available for 
his own provision. I treated my hearers on this principle, 
and spoke with the alternate unction of an attorney- 
general and an ordinary of Newgate. 

It is no self flattery to say that I was popular. Man¬ 
kind, like the lion, never spring upon the prey that keeps 
a firm face to them. I treated my hearers with easy care¬ 
lessness, and contemptuous ridicule, with haughty repro¬ 
bation, with every thing but respect. They swore that I 
was Pitt and Fox combined. 

My unfortunate antagonist had. not learnt the art of 
despising, and they trampled on him : I carried every thing 
before me. In the very act of drinking his liquor, human 
fickleness would prevail ; and Sir Mungo often found his 
fair side ail unguarded, while the very bailiffs and tally¬ 
man, whose' cheeks were purpling with ins beeves and 
beer, jostled iriy faithful true blues to get the first hearing 
of my performances. 

In all this, ( lay no claim whatever to the honours of 
oratory. The art has died among us ; and died so tho¬ 
roughly, that, if it ever rise again, a doubtful point, it must 
rise in a new generation and in another form. The ora¬ 
tions that made the walls of parliament ring thirty years 
ago, to make Europe echo their noble and soul-stirring 
power, would probably now be as strange to the ear, as 
the scorn of dishonest power and base tergiversation would 
be startling to the hunters of place on >my terms. Hut no 
more of this. Oratory is dead and gone, and we have in 
its place flippancy, feebleness, and sneering. This is the 
day of party, without the manly objects that once digni¬ 
fied even party. Public life is a game, a political loo, in 
which every player is for himself; or if he combine with 
another, it is for the purpose of tricking a third. Our ora¬ 
tory is worthy of its subjects. The recriminations of broken 
preferment-hunters and detected conspirators ought to be 
expressed in the language of their heads and hearts. The 









THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


71 


disappointed ambition of picking the public purse should 
bewail itself in the eloquence of the jail. The words of 
an Iscariot must be impressed with the guilt, shuffling, and 
meanness of an Iscariot’s soul. 

My election went on swimmingly. Majority mounted 
on tke back of majority ; and my mob-escort homewards 
was daily larger, louder tongued, and thirstier than ever. 
No physiologist who has not studied the human configura¬ 
tion by the help of the hustings, can have an idea of its 
capacity for swallowing nonsense and every thing else. 
The unfeathered ostriches who followed me open-throated, 
to gorge on what they could get, would have bolted the 
board of aldermen roasted whole, and washed them down 
in fluid enough to float a seventy-four. 

But u independence ” was not to be satisfied with show¬ 
ing its zeal for the u true cause ” in this single and fleshly 
mode. 

There certainly never was such a succession of indi¬ 
vidual misfortunes in any shire, unvisited by an earthquake 
or a French invasion. An universal bankruptcy seemed 
to prevail from the commencement of my canvass. Men 
who were said to be fc ‘’ safe as the bank” suddenly felt the 
44 pressure of the times,” and requested 44 my assistance” 
for a month or two. Farmers, whose homesteads offered 
to an inexperienced eye the very picture of yellow fer¬ 
tility ; vigorous yeomen, who laid in their own port, and 
hunted three days in the week on hundred guinea horses, 
were absolutely * 4 unable to get on at all” without a 44 mode¬ 
rate sum,” to be repaid with thanks on demand. 

The peasantry of course shared in the general affliction. 
Never was there such a mortality of pigs. Sheep were 
declared to have vanished from their industrious owners 
no one could tell how ; the dilapidations of gipseys and 
foxes were active beyond human count; and in all this 
calamity, who was to help them but Providence, and the 
“ most liberal landlord, the kindest-hearted gentleman,” 
and the most plunderage candidate that ever scattered 
away his substance for the votes of knaves ? 



72 


THE SQUIRE’S TALE, 


CHAPTER XIII. 

My day of triumph arrived at last; fortunately for the 
shire, as it alone could have saved the community from 
the extraordinary complication of ruin that was thicken¬ 
ing on all sides. Three farm-houses had already been 
burnt to the ground in my sight, and their owners “ re¬ 
duced from comfort to the cruel necessity” of building 
them again, unless rny k< well-known bounty” interposed. 
The old women, who could lose nothing else, were losing 
their health, each in what way it best pleased her, and the 
universal remedy was, a dozen of my wine. The whole 
stud of a capital horse-breeder within a furlong of my 
house walked away one morning spontaneously, and sold 
themselves at a fair ten miles off, to the “ total destruction 
of the industrious owner,” whom his misfortune had so 
completely deprived of his senses, that neither he nor his 
three brothers could vote for the true-blue withoutsome 
hope of recovering his ruin.” 

In short I was the grand resource : I mended more 
joint-stools than any carpenter on record ; held the “spark 
of life quivering” in more old hags than the county hos¬ 
pital ; and embellished the parlours of more worthy fami¬ 
lies of independent principles and many daughters with 
pianos, than ever made musical the rustic breeze before. 

The election answered all its purposes; for it fed every 
body for a mortal fortnight. 1 made two speeches a day, 
sometimes ten. It was in the height of the dog-days. I 
was worn to a skeleton with vexation, bustling, haraguing, 
and the eternal thaw and dissolution of my outward man 
under a sun that would hive startled a slave-trader. 

To return to my house for an hour together was impos¬ 
sible. Longing to get back. I knew nothing of what was 
doing there but by scraps of lamentation from my wife, 
grieving over the waste, the riot, and still worse, the visit- 


THE WOES OF wealth. 


73 


atioris of her neighbours, who, to console her in my 
absence, kindly came in troops and regiments to make 
her house their home. 

Among her grievances, too, was our interesting emigree , 
who had begun to be so charming that my son was found 
carrying on a profound flirtation with her ; while, to return 
the civility, she had introduced two most stupendous beaux 
to my family; one of them lifer brother, a captain in the 
Blut-und-gutz hussars, and the other her cousin, a major 
in the Tausend-Teufel tiralleurs. 

I was in an agony at this part of the intelligence ; but J 
dared not stir from my post. The close of my labours 
could not be far off; and an hour’s absence might over¬ 
throw every thing. Sir Mungo’s hopes were at the final 
gasp ; and I owed it to “ my honour, to my family, and 
above all, to the cause of independence”—such are the 
reflections of dupery once fairly hampered—to hold the 
hustings to the last, and crush the life out of my exhausted 
antagonist. 

I accordingly remained ; broiling, sleepless, speech¬ 
making, and in a fever of domestic fear, anxiety, and self- 
reproach from day to day. 

At last the decision came ; His Grace was inveterate, 
and he had continued dragging up his languid voters at 
the rate of one an hour. He was wringing out his dregs, the 
vestry-clerk, the sexton, and the watchman ; when the 
electors who had hitherto hung prudentially neuter, seeing 
on which side the victory was to turn, suddenly discovered 
that I was the most fitting representative ever offered to 
the true friends of true independence, and came pouring 
on me by patriotic shoals. 

Sir Mungo at length gave in, threatening, as usual, a 
petition, in which “he should show that my success was 
totally fictitious ; that however the votes might seem to 
be given to rne, they were actually intended for him ; and 
that when the popular delusion was cleared away before a 
Committee of the House, the election would not be worth 
the cockades in their caps.” 

The triumphant candidate, however soured he might be 
by the prospect of a prolonged war, yet of course laughed 
at the menace, congratulated the fallen sugar-baker on the 
Vol. J.—7 


THE SUTURE’S TALE. 


?4 

opportunity now offered to him ofretiring to the peace¬ 
ful,” or, as the sexton maliciously added, u the refried 
pursuits in which his genius might be displayed with most 
honour to himself and advantage to his country;” congratu¬ 
lated my drunken rioters on “ their uniform propriety, 
decency, decorum, and respect for the laws congratu¬ 
lated my borrowers on “ the high sense of political purity, 
the unadulterated principle, and the absence of all meaner 
motives, which had Jed them from their homes to espouse 
the cause of an humble individual known to them only by 
his zeal to relieve the county from an intolerable yoke;” 
and finally, congratulated “ myself on having been the 
fortunate instrument to achieve this pre-eminent purpose 
with such extraordinary facility ; without an effort of mind 
or body, to have subdued a colossal influence, that with¬ 
ered, and crushed, and devoured, and sat like a vulture 
gnawing the vitals of the county ; to have triumphed 
over hereditary corruption without an appeal to avarice 
or appetite ; to have put down party violence without an 
appeal to tumult; and as the cheering and brilliant result 
of the whole, to have secured for the county an imperish¬ 
able freedom, and for the humble individual who had the 
honour of addressing them, the proud conviction of a suc¬ 
cess which would gild his days to their last decline, as it 
made that day the brighest, the proudest, and the happiest 
Of his existence.” * 

Having said all this, I retired to my inn, sent for a 
physician, and went to bed ; wishing to exchange with 
any of the hob-nailed fellows about me, envying the re¬ 
sponsibilities of a galley-slave, and tortured alike with 
mental exhaustion and bodily disease. 

The doctor found me hurrying into a brain fever, and 
Ordered me, on pain of being a dead man, or a lunatic, to 
meep for the next twenty-four hours. But what have 
” public men,” to do with so many minutes’ sleep ? 

I was roused from a dreary attempt at composure by 
shouts that might have disturbed a metropolis of watch¬ 
men, and was informed that my chairing \\^as about to take 
place. 

lvefusal was idle. My presence was u essential to the 
general interests of the empire.” 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


^5 

1 went forth, and was carried in a gew-gaw machine, a 
sort of Patagonian band-box, on the heads of a troop of 
patriots, who went, for no other reason that I can dis¬ 
cover, but that of being much too drunk to stand, and 
whose going was in as many curves as ever mathematician 
leigned, or poet drew on the margin of his epic in chase of 
some elusive rhyme. 

In the momentary hazard of my neck, I was hurled, 
thrust, and heaved along on this moving pillory through 
multitudes u mad as the vexed winds,” sages full of ale, 
gin, and public principle, screaming, fighting, howling, 
and trampling each otl>er with the vigour of re-asserted 
freedom. 

Nor was I without the attentions of the defeated party. 

I was hissed, hooted, visited with opprobrious names, 
insulted by gross caricatures of my person and family, 
held on poles within an inch of my nose ; was pelted, for 
which the peculiar good-luck of its being market-day 
afforded the due reinforcement of missiles ; and after thus 
perambulating every soffocating nook and alley of the old, 
narrow, and stifling town, was tumbled from my tri¬ 
umphal car. in the midst of a general battle, at the door 
of the grand hotel. 

My duties were not yet consummated ; for I must take 
the head of the table ; round which were assembled my 
exulting constituents, to the number of as many hundreds 
as could force their self-invited presence into the room, to 
congratulate me on my victory, and “dine.” With dis¬ 
ease burning in every vein, and impatience to throw ofl 
my task and escape, that absolutely stung and burned me 
like a dose of aquafortis ; I was forced to sit through a 
night of bumpers with three-times-three, fox-hunting 
oratory, and uproarious songs of every species expressible 
by rural lungs. 

Our entertainment promised to have sat from that hour 
until this, but for a general yell, which penetrated through 
all our festivity. It was a riot of the most furious kind, 
whose first-fruits were displayed in a shower of stones, 
that broke every window in the house, and fell with great 
slaughter among our decanters. 

To pull down the hotel, to burn every beam of it, and 


76 


THE SQUIHe'3 tale. 


to make an universal broil of the carousers, were among 
the gentlest of the denunciations heard from the politicians 
of the street. In an evil hour, and probably a little under 
that influence which u puts an enemy into our mouths to 
steal away our brains,” I advanced to the balcony to ha¬ 
rangue the multitude into peace. 

I might as well have talked to them of the next budget. 
The half dozen words I spoke were oil itself, but they were 
oil upon a fire. The roar ascended fiercer than ever; and 
as t was standing waving my arms, and making gestures 
and grimaces of supplication to be listened to, which were 
attended with as much effect as if I implored a convoca¬ 
tion of white bears, I received a blow of a stone in the 
forehead, which disqualified me effectually for moving the 
passions for that night. 

I fell back insensible; was next morning pronounced 
under the necessity of an operation for a fracture of the 
osfrontis , and made my triumphal entry into my own de¬ 
mesne, covered with a blanket, and carried on a shutter. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

I itEcovEiiED, either because a man must do so who 
has more to suffer on earth, or because it is hard to knock 
out a country gentleman’s brains ; and on recognising 
my family for the first time in a fortnight, I received the 
intelligence that Sir Mungo had actually kept his word, 
and that I must fight the battle over again before a com¬ 
mittee of the House of Commons. 

It would have been wisdom to leave him to fight it 
alone ; but, “ l was pledged to the county that was the 
phrase. I had spent twenty thousand pounds to fatten 
electors, and supply their establishments with port and 
pianos ; it was cruel that all this should be thrown away. 
So said my weeping wife, horrified at the scenes in which 
we had all been plunged, and innocently thinking that to. 
go on was the easiest way to come back. 



THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


77 


As to our constituents, the bare idea of my relinquish¬ 
ing the seat threw them into absolute despair. I was a 
capital prize in the election lottery. They were sure oi 
a contest as long as I could be inflamed into folly; while 
the triumph of His Grace would close the wheel for half 
a century to come. I was sick, feeble, hating the sun and 
air, and mankind, and, above all, its patriotic portion. 
But Sir Mungo had, in the course of the election, played 
one or two slippery tricks which disgusted me. His 
Grace, too, at the safe distance of St. Stephens, had 
thought proper to bully; and the double irritation deter¬ 
mined me to hoist the flag of defiance against the duke 
and his man together. 

I kept my resolution ; jumped out of my sick bed ; 
hurried me to town ; and, at the expense of a fortnight 
more of the merest misery on earth—by which all its ex¬ 
perimentalists will understand that I mean the misery of 
attending on an election committee—I was at length de¬ 
clared duly returned ; and had to pay for justice but five 
thousand pounds more. 

Never did man throw himself on his couch with move 
relief of heart than I, when I returned to my solitary 
chamber in the Clarendon. 44 Now,” thought 1, 44 my last 
labour is achieved, and I may return to the quiet life for 
which all my habits were fitted. I have shown that I am 
not to be trifled with by any man, let his rank be what it 
may. I have, ’tis true, some additional share of public 
duty to perform, but. I shall not suffer it to engross the 
dearer hours that every human being owes to his own 
happiness and that of his family. Henceforth for my fruits 
and flowers ; for my violin and my books ; for the day of 
literature, and the evening of peace ; the pulses of affec¬ 
tionate hearts, and smiles from lips unsullied by the world.” 

I ordered post-horses to be ready half an hour after din¬ 
ner, and flung myself down to get rid of the intolerable 
weariness that the day’s lingering about Palace-yard had 
fixed in every bone. I was roused from sleep by a billet 
from the Treasury ; stating, with the succinctness of office* 
that as a debate of the very highest importance was to 
Some on that night, 44 the presence of the county members 


78 


TilE SaUIUE’s TALE. 


would confer a particular obligation on His Majesty’s Go¬ 
vernment,” &c. But, whatever might be my opinion of 
my own prowess, I had not yet learned to believe that J 
could save nations, and I threw the billet into the fire¬ 
place. Within the next five minutes another appeal came 
from the leader of opposition ; professing, at much greater 
length, his highest respect for the principles of honour and 
political conduct which had distinguished my election. 
He admitted, indeed, that I had not yet “ openly declared 
my intention of joining the phalanx of those virtuous and 
enlightened patriots, of whom he considered himself in 
every sense the least important; by whose vigilance alone 
the country was to be preserved from the fatal results of 
being governed by a giddy, incapable, and unprincipled 
faction, with just vigour enough to rush headlong into per¬ 
petual error, and sense enough to dupe a credulous and 
generous people. He felt confident, therefore, that 1 
would not hesitate a moment in the choice between the 
betrayers and the preservers of the constitution ; and that 
the independence which I, by|uch a powerful display of 
ability, and with such triumphant success, had vindicated 
on the hustings, I should, on that night, be prepared to 
lead to victory over a mere perishing faction, which re¬ 
quired nothing but exposure by men of intelligence and 
intrepidity to be instantly undone.” 

This dilemma was brought upon me by my attempting 
the exploded practice of keeping my vote free. I returned 
i similar answer to both notes; and that 44 sudden and 
severe indisposition” which so often sends a hesitating 
statesman to his pillow in the height of health, served me, 
and not altogether without truth, for my escape from the 
statesman-like necessity of declaring 44 my opinion” before 
1 had made up my mind. 

The post-chaise was at the door. I had cavalierly left 
both parties to fight for their country, and for what they 
could pick up in the contest, and was placing my foot 
upon the step, when I was surrounded by a posse of my 
constituents just arrived with a whole packet of turnpike 
bills, county presentments,, and a demand to be heard bv 
counsel against a bill for a new bridge. 

1 protested against the interruption; but no protester:. 


THE WOES OP WEALTH. 


70 


even among the peerage, ever made his protest to less 
purpose. Every soul present was ready to swear that his 
whole earthly existence depended on my appearing in de¬ 
fence of the 4 ‘ rights of gentlemen who must be utterly 
ruined” by the success of the obnoxious measures. Rea¬ 
soning was out of the question with those desperate sup¬ 
plicants. I was literally forced back to my apartment, 
from which, after a three hours effort to understand griev¬ 
ances as many and various as there were tongues among 
them, I was finally conveyed, to make all sure, by the 
deputation to the door of the "House ; where my entrance 
excited equal surprise and suspicion on both sides, and 
where I was involved in a long squabble with the equally 
violent partizans of the bridge, &c. I returned me to my 
bed at exactly four o’clock of the following morning. 

When it was once found that I could do business, I was 
not left without business enough to do. One paltry inter¬ 
est or other crowded on me. With each applicant, his 
own concerns were worthy to stir heaven and earth ; and 
1 at length saw no better resource than taking the evil at 
its height, giving myself up wholly and solely to the accu¬ 
mulation of petty trouble, working my way through it at 
once, and then quietly withdrawing from the bustle of the 
session to my house, if not giving up the seat altogether. 

O rus, quando te aspiciam! was my hourly sigh. Ho¬ 
race, choked by the heat and deafened by the roar of 
Rome, never longed for the pleasant oblivion, the slumber, 
and untroubled hours of his Sabine farm, with keener 
pinings. But chain upon chain bound me to the oar. 
The drudgery of committees during the morning, followed 
by a levee of solicitors, barristers, and country complain¬ 
ants, and this again followed by a debate that never closed 
till sunrise, were among the rewards of my patriotism. 

Ill news, too, came from home. The interesting emi< 
gree was growing insolent on the strength of her charms ; 
and my wife was growing miserable at the perpetual hints 
of the neighbourhood that this showy demoiselle was al¬ 
ready privately married to my prodigal. The attentions of 
the "two superbly moustached relatives of this new orna¬ 
ment to our line were becoming palpable, and my daugh¬ 
ters, who had already learned to waltz with them, were the 


so 


TlIE SQEIIIe’s TALE. 


venomed subject of every tea-table. I sent an instant 
order for the demoiselle to be turned out of the house, the 
two chevaliers to be kicked after her, and my wife and 
daughters to come up to town without delay. 

In two days they were upon the road ; amidst the ge¬ 
neral wonder of the spinsterhood, who of course propa¬ 
gated their opinions with the freedom of a land of liberty, 
and decided that so sudden a move augured ruin of some 
kind or other,” an augury which they were content to 
divide between my estates and the matrimonial prospects 
of my daughters. 

In impatience to meet the only beings for whom I could 
have a care, I rode a few miles out of town on the evening 
of their coming, and felt a parent’s throb of heart, as, 
standing upon the summit of a hill from which the prospect 
spread extensively, I saw a travelling carriage, some miles 
off, twinkling along in the sunshine like a gliding play¬ 
thing. I galloped down to meet it. The meeting soon . 
came. The carriage was mine, and I saw in it—my re¬ 
creant son side by side with my recreant governess. They 
were in high good-humour, arid had no eyes for the luck¬ 
less father, who would have as soon seen a son of his 
bound to New South Wales for life. 

But this was my legacy. Had I remained the obscure 
denizen of a village, what French woman under heaven 
would have taken the trouble of encumbering herself with 
a husband who had never smoked a cigar in a Parisian 
cafe? They whirled along. 1 had no heart to stop them. 

While I was pondering on the ill stars that continually 
dropped their influence on me, the true travellers of whom 
I was in search came up, and I felt, folded in their arms, 
that I yet had happiness in store. But here dropped the 
influence still. At our lingering supper I heard of nothing 
but persecutions endured in all shapes from every human 
being that feared, hated, or envied, which included the 
whole population of their u bosom friends and, in addi¬ 
tion, from the captain and major, who, after soliciting my 
girls to elope, made formal proposals, and, on rejection, 
severally declared that they must have an interview for the 
purpose of shooting themselves in the presence of their 
u Voo lovely, but too cruel,” fair ones. 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


81 


1 lie threat of those adorers had the full effect of terrify¬ 
ing my females; and, in mingled indignation and alarm, 
they implored me to set, sell, or lay waste, if l liked, every 
acre belonging to me in this intolerable county, and for 
life bury myself and them in the smoky security of London. 

I gave way to their nervousness; before a week was out, 
sold my house for half its value, purchased a London man¬ 
sion for twice as much as it was worth, and, at fifty-five, 
began the world again. 

But here a new difficulty arose. I had outrun my in¬ 
come ; and my town establishment gave every prospect 
of helping me to outrun it still more. My agent’s letters 
were ominous. I owed large sums as it was; and to live 
in the circle into which I had been forced would leave me 
a beggar. 

I now accomplished the only fortunate feat of my life, 
f settled my mode of retrenchment on the spot; sold a 
third of my estate to clear the remainder; and, notwith¬ 
standing some dejected looks at home, prohibited two routs 
and a fancy-ball in embryo. 

From that moment my ill-luck grew weary of harassing 
me. Like a man dyingof plethora, every operation on my 
superfluity was a step to health. 

A week had not passed before I received a repentant 
letter from my son, deeply regretting the folly by which he 
had been beguiled into marriage with a frivolous and heart- 
less woman, who, on hearing of my diminution of property 
happily exaggerated into my utter ruin, upbraided him 
with bringing her into poverty, and ran off, carrying with 
her every shilling of which he was master. 

But the captain and major were still to be disposed of • 
and a note from a correspondent, whose name defied my 
keenest powers of deciphering, informed me that they had 
arrived in town, fiercely determined on carrying the 
heiresses by storm. 

I took my measures here,too; for, without going to the 
formality of complaining to magistrates and feeing bailiffs 
—means which would have been beneath the dignity of 
heroes—I treated them in the military w'ay ; I bought a 
blunderbuss. 


82 


THE SQUIRE’S TALK. 


CHAPTER XV. 

Among my early habits, I had indulged an idle fondness 
for the drama, which extended itself to the whole disastrous 
race that strut and struggle their hour upon the rustic 
stage. The strollers that murdered sleep in our village 
ranged themselves by instinct under my protection. My 
barn was at their service when their worships the magis¬ 
trates, in the pride of office, refused their license for the 
legitimate and very crazy theatre. My purse sometimes 
assisted kings and queens against calamities more serious 
than the fall of thrones ; and moderate as my table was, it 
had a cover now and then for the more decorous among 
those sons and daughters of the wheel of fortune. 

To do them justice, I had never found reason to regret 
this trivial hospitality. Their return, if not in kind, was 
in what I liked better, in good-will. I w r as amused by their 
pleasantry ; my wine brought out their anecdote ; and 
even from the wild whim and strange adventure of their 
life of chance, I perhaps derived lessons well worth all I 
gave for them. 

As I was sitting alone a few days after the receipt of the 
mysterious billet, and in the act of studying it for the twen¬ 
tieth time, my valet announced a stranger who was press- 
ingly anxious to u see me for but one moment.” Some 

new invention of the enemy” was my first thought; 
which was by no means cleared up bv the entrance of a 
figure dressed in the extreme of faded fashion, with a tinge 
of rouge still upon a hollow cheek, and an air something 
between the dash of a rake, and the conscious elegance of 
a dancing-master. 

“ I presume you must recollect me, Sir,” said he, ad¬ 
vancing three stage-steps, and then poising himself on a 
pointed toe. 

“ Not in the least,” was my answer. 

** Very extraordinary 1 ; ’raze out the written traces of 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


83 

the brain !’ Not recollect my name ! Alphonso Mor¬ 
timer !” 

44 1 am as much in the dark as ever, Mr. Mortimer.” 

44 Why, Sir, the thing is possible; for, as the divine 
Shakspeare says, if a man would be remembered six 
months after his death, lie must build churches; and as 
none of my money ever went in that direction,-” 

But in whatever direction his purse might have gone, 
that of his eye was obvious enough : a bottle of claret was 
the talisman that fixed it, and stopped the speaker with a 
short episodical cough and an application of his hand to 
his throat, the true professional expression of extreme 
huskiness. Those signs would have told me the stroller, 
if I had met him in any part of the world’s circumference : 
my old propensities warmed to him, and 1 filled Mr. Mor¬ 
timer a bumper. 

He swallowed the wine with the air of a connoisseur, 
and in return for my civility, proposed that he should have 
the honour of drinking my health, which he did in a second 
bumper. 

44 Now, Mr. Mortimer,” said I, u indulge me by men¬ 
tioning your business with me.” 

u Business ! my dear Sir,” said he, with a look of im¬ 
pudent drollery, “ over such a glass of wine ; ‘ throw physic 
to the dogs.’ This is nectar. The boquet is enough to 
perfume a whole theatre, through oil, orange-peel, bump¬ 
kins, and all. ’Pon my life, they may talk of champagne, 
but for the true enjoyment of the thing, the sober certainty 
of waking bliss, I say a bottle of cool claret against tlx* 
Prince Regent’s cellar. Vive Carbonel! Let me have the 
honour to propose a toast—a lady—your own excellent 
)adv, one of the finest women that ever graced a benefit 
night! ’pon my honour.” 

Execution followed the word ; the bumper was filled, 
and despatched in an instant. 

44 But is it possible, my dear baronet ?” said lie, draw¬ 
ing his chair nearer the fire, and filling his glass, to be 
ready for another act of gallantry. “ I can scarcely bring 
myself to conceive that you can have forgot my perform¬ 
ance. My name, I admit, may go for nothing. In fact. I 




84 


THE SQUIRE'S TALE. 


have had three within our last circuit. It gives an eclat- 
a brilliant novelty, a je ne scats quoi , to an actor. Your 
Augustus Belville, or Charles Caversham Castleton, or 
any of your high-sounding, lady-catching, romantic appen¬ 
dages have a prodigious effect placarded in letters a foot 
and a half long on a village wall. I have known the same 
actor hissed under the honest but ruinous appellative of 
Williams or Wilkins, and hissed by an audience of a dozen 
ploughmen, with the sexton’s and schoolmaster’s wives for 
side-box company, who, in the next town, under the sono¬ 
rous name of Montague Mandeville, “ from the Theatre 
Royal, Covent Garden, engaged for three nights only,” 
drew ten-pound houses, and was honoured with three 
rounds of applause at his first bow. But you don’t drink. 
And I take shame to myself for having omitted a toast in¬ 
cumbent on every man who has had the honour of seeing 
so much grace, beauty, and accomplishment—I mean the 
health and happiness of your two lovely daughters.” He 
honoured the toast without delay. 

I did not altogether relish this familiarity, and he pro¬ 
bably saw my opinion in my countenance. 

“ If I have taken too great a liberty on this occasion," 
said the stroller, u I must find my excuse in the spontane¬ 
ous and irresistible effusion of a gratitude inwoven in my 
nature, ‘still paying, still to owe ;’ a feeling that in me, 
once touched, disdains a limit. And it was on account of 
those two very lovely young ladies that I have now waited 
on you.” 

I was fully alive on the subject, and expressed my impa¬ 
tience to hear what he had to say, as soon as possible. 

“The matter is of the most interesting nature, indeed, 
my dear baronet; but, the bottle stands with you. Yet I 
cannot Buffer you to drink such a toast out of the bottom ; 
sutler me to ring for another—a magnum, if you like. As 
to my name, Shukspeare, with all his supreme knowledge 
of every thing, is certainly wrong for once, ‘ What’s in a 
name ? a rose by any other name,’ and so forth. Now, I 
say, that there is a prodigious deal in a name. Look 
through the world. But I beg a thousand pardons—] have 
not drunk your public health yet. Here’s to the represen¬ 
tative of our county, a man that ‘ dares be honest in the 






THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


85 


/ 

worst of times.’ ’Pon my life your cellar improves prodi¬ 
giously. This bottle puts the other quite out of counte¬ 
nance ; the coolness more delicious, the flavour more 
delicate. When I lav in my next stock, I shall make 
Chambertin the heawest article fn my wine-merchant^ 
bill. Long corks and long credit is mv maxim.” 

He drank, and became the or ator of appqliatives again. 

“ As to name, why every thing’in life is done by a name. 
4 What is friendship but a name V says your poet. 4 What 
is virtue but a name V says your philosopher. VY hat is my 
Lord X’s rentroll but a name ? YY hat is his gambling grace 
of Z’s honour but a name ? or what is the principle, public 
or private, of half mankind but a name ? Shakspeare, im¬ 
mortal as he was. was unquestionably wrong. But can 
you have forgot my Hamlet ?, mv Tag in the Rivals, and 
my Scrub ? I played them all on the same night, in the 
same barrl, and in the same presence that I have now the 
honour to enjoy. Y'ersatility is the life, the soul and body, 
the triumph of genius ; and may this claret, that flames and 
sparkles in its chrystal bounds, as Comus says, be the last 
that, as Antony says, ‘ doth tame the fever of my amorous 
lip but f will acknowledge that, leaving the rant, the vo¬ 
ciferation, the struggle in the throat, and the convulsion in 
the limbs, to the Charlatans of Melpomene, 1 on that night 
exhibited a variety of talent that ought to have secured an 
engagement for life, with an increasing salary, on the me¬ 
tropolitan boards. But, no matter—hang care, say I. 
This bottle’s the sun of our table ; and here I must take 
the liberty of drinking a sentiment— 4 However shorn of 
its beams the sun of our fortune may be. may the sun of 
our table never set!” He drank to (he sentiment most 
cordially. 4 ‘Or,” said he, pouring ihe last drop of his lu¬ 
minary into his glass, 44 as the toast is not altogether new, 
or, as the immortal author, says Sheridan, and 1 thoughtof 
the same thing, only that he thought of it first, 1 shall give 
it to you in an improved form. Let us call it the moon of 
our table ; and here’s 4 May our moon always be at the 
full!’ But I beg innumerable pardons—I have finished 
the bottle, and have not left you a drop. Let me amend 
my error.” 

He. rang the bell, and stirred the fire; and with our 

VoL. I.—8 


66 THE SQUIRE’S TALE. 

third bottle before us, he at length let me into the object 
of his mission. 

It was to announce the serious intelligence that my 
daughters were to be carried off, on their return from the 
Opera that night, by the captain arid major ; who, being 
nearer the scene of action than the fair emigree , had dis¬ 
covered that I was not yet ruined enough to make my 
alliance undesirable. They were now in a coffee-house 
in the Haymarket, w r ith their post-chaises in waiting. 
The prizes were to be accosted and separated from their 
party in the u crush ro®m,” handed down stairs by the two 
heroes, and then, bon gre mal gre , hurried to Gretna. 

The affair was now not for me, but for public justice. 
I sent for a couple of police officers, and with my village 
Hamlet went straight to the rendezvous. The two adven¬ 
turers were pointed out to me in an inner room, discuss¬ 
ing a flask of champagne. Time had begun to hang as 
heavy with their impatience as with mine. They looked 
perpetually at their diamond-set watches ; lounged in their 
superb mantles ; and arranged their enormous moustaches 
in the mirrer. I would have pounced upon them at the 
instant; but my guide insisted on my delaying the caption, 
or, as he called it, u the catastrophe,” until the warrants, 
for which one of our policemen was despatched, had 
arrived. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

As I paced the coffee-room, casting many a glance 
through the glass door at my culprits within, I could not 
help the exclamation, u Was it such baboonery of visage 
that charmed the tastes of my countrywomen at the pre¬ 
sent dafy ? Was it in ahead piled with a mane worthy 
of a buffalo, and lips that resembled nothing but a tiger- 
cat’s, to captivale the fancy of any woman above the sensi¬ 
bilities of an Esquimaux ?” Some of my soliloquy, 
rather louder than I had intended, caught my new friend’s 



THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


87 


ear ; and with his usual ease, he gave me the benefit of 
his own conceptions. 

u You may rely upon it, baronet, that the world are apt 
to make considerable mistakes in the character of the 
lovely sex ; and one of those is their timidity. [ pass by 
the innumerable instances in which they daily exhibit a 
courage that throws ours into total eclipse. When a 
woman takes it into her head to defy public opinion, she 
faces the fight with the boldness of a Bucephalus. But 
in the matter of the human animal, you may rely on it, 
that the more frightful the object is, the more it charms 
the heroism of the sex. Take the moustaches off those 
two fellows, and not a woman within the bills of mor¬ 
tality would waste a glance on them. Send them as they 
are into any fete in London, and they instantly extinguish 
every man vulgar enough to shave. A wig and a waltz 
would dance them into the hearts of the whole female 
peerage. Their strength is, like Samson’s, in the hair; 
and the standard of perfection is divided between a Jew v 
boxer and an Italian bravo. The blacker the skin, and 
the thicker the beard, you may rely on it, the more cap¬ 
tivating the lover. If to those are added a countenance 
between Spadaccino and Sbirro, between the assassin 
and the spy, with corresponding manners, the fortunate 
possessor may lay his commands upon any heiress, from 
Tweed to Thaine, to follow him through the circumnavi¬ 
gation of the globe/’ 

I was forced to confess that I was pretty much of his 
opinion ; but my experience had been limited ; and, ex¬ 
cept in the instance of an occasional booby who brought 
back his chin to our county as an evidence of a fortnight 
in Boulogne ; or some St James’ aid-de-camp, who only 
served to frighten the farmer’s teams, I had seldom seen 
the rabbinical ornament among people calling themselves 
Christians. 

u My facts,” said he, u are indubitable. I speak from 
an experience of twenty years, and a hundred and sixty 
degrees of latitude and longitude. Let one instance answer 
for all. 

u In a ramble to the continent during the peace, I took 
Hp my quarters in Dresden. The Germans are a prettily 


i 






S8 


THE SUUIRE'S TALE. 


moustached army ; and some of their cavalry are really 
well accoutred under the nose. They throve accordingly. 
The unfortunate civilians were found guilty of using the 
razor ; and not a woman would took at a civilian while 
an infantry officer was to be found ; nor at an infantry 
officer while their superiors on the lip and chin were dis¬ 
coverable among the horse, A barouche full of French 
aids-de-camp came to visit the wonders of this city .of 
shows, and, l believe, to make some little reconnoissances 
\vhich might be convenient, in the next invasion. The 
Frenchman knows the world too well, not to know how 
much of it depends upon the ladies ; and knows too much 
of the ladies, not to take the most invincible way to their 
hearts. The aids-de-camp came moustached to the most 
captivating degree ; and, as Frenchmen are your grand 
improvers for Europe in cookery, complexions, and hair¬ 
cutting, they brought with them, lor the ministers and 
grandees, the last receipts for fricandeaux; won the ser¬ 
vices of the beaux by a new dye. which turned the Ger¬ 
man’s yellow article the true gipsy hue ; and vanquished 
the ladies, en masse , by the new chin tuft a Vim - 
per idle. 

u This triumph had its week, and but its week. At the 
end of seven days, in rolled half a dozen kibitkas, full of 
Russians de la garde. They could not equal the elegance 
of the Frenchmen, and they wisely made no pretension of 
the kind ; but they wore beards down to the middle, and 
their claims were instantly acknowledged. The French¬ 
men walked up and down the ball-rooms partnerless, 
until the Scythians were served : as to the German mili- 
tairesi not a female soul acknowledged their existence. 
But what is human glory when it depends on the con¬ 
stancy of the fair ? The Russians were whirling away 
among the elite of the Dresden Venusewhen a pulk of 
Cossacks passed a night or two within the walls on their 
return to Siberia. They were Bashkirs, and the perfec¬ 
tion of barbarism ; the choicest specimens of savagery 
that could be gathered from the Volga to the Yellow Sea. 
They might have said to the bear, thou art my brother ; 
and to the hippopotamus, thou art my sister. What was the 
fcsult ? I swear it in the presence of the chaste stars, the 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


89 

six officers of the pulk no sooner appeared at; the ridotto, 
than they distanced German, French, and Russian alto¬ 
gether ; scattered their grim smiles with universal cap¬ 
tivation ; and when the barbarians marched through the 
gates, carried off in matrimonial chains the six handsomest 
and richest dames of the famous and fastidious capital of 
Saxony. 

“ The only cause that I could ever discover for this 
success was, that the ‘ bearded pard and Hvrcan tiger’ 
were smooth to them ; and nothing but the nicest inspec¬ 
tion could distinguish the front from the back of their 
heads. It was the general barbarism of brow, beard, and 
whisker, that overwhelmed the hopes of the rivals and the 
hearts of the belles.” T 

“ But having enlightened me on so many subjects,” 
said I, “ enlighten me oil one more. What has induced 
you to take so much trouble about mv affairs?” 

“ One reason at a time may actuate inferior mortals,” 
was the reply ; “ but I have had three. In the first, 
place, a liking for adventure ; in the next, a desire to 
punish a pair of rogues ; and in the third, a hope to return 
an obligation to a benefactor. You had a fondness for the 
drama that did honour to your taste. You resisted the 
persuasions of silly friends, the insolence of office, and 
the pride of wealth, that would have bid you abandon us. 
Resides, though you have forgotten my Hamlet, and even 
my Scrub, I have not forgotten that the first and last five 
pound note that I have touched these five years, 4 dear as 
the light that visits these sad eyes,' the highest testimonial 
of the public feeling that ever honoured my theatrical 
powers, came on that nigiit from your purse for my stage- 
box. I bound myself by a vow, ‘solemn and deep as 
triple-guarded Styx,’ to return the favour on the first op¬ 
portunity. It arrived. I yesterday threw up my engage¬ 
ment with as pretty a company as ever had a blanket for 
a drop-scene, or divided five shillings a week; and have, 
since daylight, walked forty miles to perform in a new part, 
without a rehearsal, and in which, a3 1 said on my benefit 
night, 

The hope that cheers my spirit, while it awes, 

Is the high favour of your kind applause* 

8 * 


THE SQUIRE *S TALE, 


‘JO 




But lo ! the officer 1—What news from the Rialto ? Hear 
it not, Duncan.” 

The policeman produced his credentials, and we entered 
the room ; where sat the two heroes yawning at the tar* 
diness of time, as widely as if they were marquises. The 
eciaircissement was brief; the astonishment of the parties 
excessive ; and their broken English protestations of inno¬ 
cence and insult, were in the highest style of the mous¬ 
tache. 1, however, proceeded to action ; and having or¬ 
dered them to give up their pistols, gave their persons also 
into the hands of the police, and then demanded, under 
what pretence they had dared to carry on so atrocious a 
design. 

They talked like field-marshals, threatened implacable 
vengeance, and demanded my card. 1 looked round for 
my guide, my proof, my man of evidence ; but Hamlet 
was vanished ; and the awkward idea dashed across my 
mind, that the stroller had been involving me in a scrape, 
which was of course to end in extracting money for the 
assault. Even the experienced ministers of caption 
seemed at fault. The courage of the captives naturally 
became tremendous. After denunciations of law and 
damages enough to ruin my treasury, they were striding 
contemptuously to the door. But at the moment when 
the scales of justice hung tremblingly between us, a loud 
laugh announced the stroller. He walked from behind a 
curtain, and with a low bow to one of the captives, begged 
that he would honour him and the company with a song. 
He was answered by a burst of indignation. 

“ Prodigiously wed played,’ said the stroller, surveying 
him with a critical eye. Attitude good, emphasis cor¬ 
rect, countenance en costume; voice a little in alt, but the 
whole much above par. Ah, you rascal, if you had 
played your Pilch to my Macheath in that style on the 
night of my benefit, you would not have been hissed so 
mercilessly. But come, be honest for once. Officer, 
take off my friend’s moustache’s. 1 hate hypocrisy. If 
he is a rogue, at least let him be a barefaced one.” Ham¬ 
let laughed loudly at. the conceit; the policeman obeyed 
the mandate ; and the Blut-und-gut?; hussar stood before 
me a smooth-lipped knave of an Englishman, 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


91 


u Now, said the stroller, turning 1 to me, u if the stupid 
managers of the London houses had any sense, would 1 
be left long without an engagement ? Here’s a subject 
for farce, opera, and melodrame; enough to work 
through a whole season. What can be more absurd than 
to be importing actors and plays by the hundred*weight 
trom Paris, when native talent, ver sus native roguery, can 
produce scenes like this ? Here's matter for fifty melo- 
drames. But, to let you behind the scenes, the whole 
affair, or, as we call it, the programme, is as follows. The 
captain and the major are my particular acquaintance, 
both of the same corps, and that corps served under my 
orders within the last six months. T.he captain played 
farce, lit the lamps, and posted the hills ; the major played 
trajedy, made pantaloons, ana dressed-' perukes. Both 
were clever in their way. But I was forced to drum them 
both out of my regiment; the captain, for want of dis¬ 
tinguishing between his neighbour’s finances and his own : 
and the major, for having the impudence to marry against 
my commands a little French milliner, whom I had im¬ 
ported to play soubrettes, and who, being thereupon dis¬ 
charged, is now, I understand, playing the orphaned and 
interesting emigree in some gentleman’s family.” 

My heart leaped at the intelligence. A few words 
more satisfied me of the identity of the soubrette player 
with my governess. My son’s unfortunate marriage was 
void. The detected heroes made no further pretence to 
their commissions ; and compelling them to sign a full 
acknowledgment of their plan, to be held up in terrorem 
to all country ladies enamoured ol the moustache, I saw 
them both turned into the street; and then driving to the 
Opera-house, escorted my trembling daughters in triumph 
home. 

But London life was still as irksome as ever, and before 
I laid my head on my pillow, one of my vows was to break 
loose from it, and even to take a temporary leave of Eng¬ 
land as soon as possible. 

Again I was to have the proof that neither good nor ill 
luck comes alone, I had but just franked my letter to my 
son informing him that he was a husband no more, when 
my eye was caught by the sight of a string of post-chaises 


92 


THE SQUIRE'S TALE. 


rolling away from a hotel opposite, much favoured by 
members from the sister country. As I walked down to 
the House, the same'symptoms of rapid movement were 
discoverable in all directions. The world seemed taking 
wing. Before I was halfway down St. James’s street, 1 
was bowed to out of twenty vehicles rattling along at fuli 
speed. A crowd in Pall Mall, round the door of a club¬ 
house, were roaring with laughter at a whole battalion ol 
bailiffs, who stood in double lines, eyeing every man that 
came out, as a fox would eye an escaping pullet. As 
each forthcomer presented himself ready for travel, and 
successively drove off, the wrath of the sheriff’s officers 
could lie equalled only by the boisterous merriment of the 
populace. 

But among the mingled stories of the mob I was still in 
the dark. My jov was to break on me all at once. I 
reached St. Stephens ; the first look at the House let me 
into the secret. The English members were few ; there 
was a little group of Scotch members close at the pre¬ 
mier’s ear; i missed my gav friends from the sister coun¬ 
try. They were flown to a man. In five minutes after 
the speaker had taken the chair, the premier informed the 
House that, for reasons essential to the public good, by 
which he certainly meant something different from the fall 
of lus own administration, it had pleased His Majesty 
that this parliament should be then and there dissolved.” 

I was now a free man. i\o debt loaded representative 
within five minutes of the loss of privilege ever hurried 
over the pavement of London with more eagerness than 
I, to carry back the glad tiding3 to my household. No 
disappointed statesman ever made more ardent protesta¬ 
tions against the folly of wasting life in being the slave of 
trifles and triflers ; no ex-member ever abjured late de¬ 
bates, speaker’s dinners, levees to hear the speech read, 
and the eternal troubles of country correspondence, with 
sterner resolution. No more franking ; no more frivolity; 
no more midnight squabbling ; no more turnpike wars ; 1 
was free. 

Yet, what is the resolution of man after all ? Within a 
week I began to miss the occupation of the evening. 
The waiters at the club applied to me no more for the 


/ 


- * 


THE WOES OF WEALTH. 


93 


% 

“favour of my cover,” and f involuntarily felt even this. 
The dinner-cards of the high officials no longer came 
pouring in ; and though I hated the routine of those tire¬ 
some performances, yet I was not pleased at thus drop¬ 
ping out of society. I felt a general diminution of homage. 
I was losing caste. My wile and daughters were reduced 
to a regimen of three routs a week. A note from the 
country, stating that Molasses was secretly canvassing, 
roused me to my mettle. I received a long letter from my 
constituents, summoning me to the patriotic duty of again 
u rescuing the county from a domineering faction, and of 
securing its independence upon a free, firm, and constitu¬ 
tional basis,” &c &c 1 wrote an according answer, 
corrected, copied, re read my manifesto, caught an acci¬ 
dental glimpse of my gray hairs in the glass, smiled at the 
weakness of man, and threw my work into the fire. 

I was once more a philosopher. With the last spark 
that quivered along my blackened paper, out went my 
ambition. But no man is wise in lingering near the scene 
of temptation. I ordered a general movement; and in 
one month we were looking down from the Jurs. on the 
purple hills and silver waters of Switzerland. 





« 










£ I 


THE WALLACHIAN. 


The storm had extended over the whole range of the 
St. Bernard, and intelligence rapidly came in of the loss 
of cattle and peasantry in the innumerable ravines. Those 
calamities are of regular recurrence, for nothing will make 
the peasant in any country aware that what has happened 
to others may happen to himself; and the Swiss moun¬ 
taineer habitually answers to all suggestions on the subject 
that he has not lost his life yet; an argument, which 
allows of no appeal until the evil arrives, and the appeal 
may be made to the winds. But the Alpine storm actu¬ 
ally generates a special and most hazardous exposure, from 
the circumstance that the smugglers then pass more un¬ 
molested by the guardians of the customs, and that their 
cargoes command an additional value from the perils of 
the transit. Winter, and summers turned into winter, arc 
thus the strong temptation of the smuggler, and every 
storm leaves melancholy examples of the waste of human 
life for the earlier supply of necklaces and cigars to the 
sunny idlers of the plains. * 

Some unfortunate beings had been already brought into 
the convent from the Swiss side ; but the rumour that a 
troop of pilgrims returning from Italy were surprised in the 
tempest, roused all our sympathies, and every guest in the 
convent talked of volunteering to assist the monks, who 
were much worn out by their incessant exertions. 

Among the most zealous was a fine-looking foreigner, 
whom I should have taken for a Greek, from his quick eye 
and statue like physiognomy ; but who, on my making a 
passing observation-of the kind, told me smilingly that he 
had no pretensions to so classic a descent, and that the 
further he traced back, the nearer he came to the Hun. 
He was a Wallachian colonel of cavalry, and was now on 
a diplomatic mission from his court to France, having 






THE WAXLACHIAN. 


95 


Come by Greece and Naples; of both which his know¬ 
ledge was intimate, close, and curious in a high degree. 
But the tidings of the pilgrims put an end to every topic 
but that of their rescue; and at the head of a party, of 
which I made one, the colonel sallied forth to the spot of 
ruin. 

Our assistance was well meant, and it had perhaps the 
effect of encouraging the regular discoverers ; but it was 
too awkward to be of much use. The monks and attend¬ 
ants, however, with their experienced eyes and their long 
poles did good service : and the litters and other convey¬ 
ances were loaded with sufferers luckily so soon rescued 
from their cold bed, that 1 believe the whole number, from 
twenty to thirty, recovered. 

Evening was lowering fiercely upon our work, and we 
had all begun to think of the comfortable fire and table of 
the convent. The word was given to march, and shoul¬ 
dering our poles, we moved through the snow-drifts, in a 
phalanx of what might have been imagined by the Alpine 
travellers into a troop of very sufficient levyers of unli¬ 
censed contributions. 

While I was indulging myself in some such vision through 
the sleet that fell in sharp and thick whirls round our troop, 
I was warned against the unsuitableness of the employ¬ 
ment by slipping from the narrow ridge of the mountain 
road into a gully at its side. I was instantly plunged up 
to the teeth, and should have probably gone a much more 
formidable depth, but for my pole’s falling across the 
chasm, and in some degree breaking my descent. 

All hands were, however, summoned, and I was set on 
terra firma again. But in the struggle to extricate myself, 
my feet had touched something that I conceived to be a 
human body. The guides had no inclination to brave the 
night, and advised our hastening homeward; but my gal¬ 
lant Wallachian thought with me, and he declared his de¬ 
termination to explore the deposite of the snow. 

A beginning was made by my pole, and my first trophy 
was a furred shoe. There was now no hesitation on the 
part of any one, and after an hour’s digging, we happily 
succeeded in bringing from the bottom of the drift a young 
Italian peasant with a child in her arms. She seemed to 





THE WALL A CHIAN. 


2G 

be totally dead; but the infant was alive, and had been so 
carefully wrapped round, that the mother must have ex¬ 
posed herselt for the preservation of her babe. 

The circumstance naturally interested us all, and per¬ 
haps the colonel and myself peculiarly, from our peculiar 
share in the discovery. We remained in the convent hos¬ 
pital during the night, suggesting new expedients of resto¬ 
ration as the old failed, and at length had the happiness of 
seeing life rekindle. The peasant’s story was as we had 
conjectured: she was on her wav to a chapel on the bor¬ 
ders of the like of Lucerne when the storm came on. 
After struggling from shelter to shelter in crossing the 
mountain, she had sat down in despair by the precipice, -1 
and conceiving her own death inevitable, unhesitatingly 
hastened its chance by stripping herself of the chief part 
of her clothing to preserve warmth in her child. 

I observed this to the Wallachian as the strong instinct 
of maternity. “No,” said he, “ it is the strong affection 
of woman’s nature. I have known hazards and trials that 
would have shaken the vigour of many a man, endured 
and overcome by a tender girl of eighteen, timid as a 
fawn, and used to the enjoyments of a life of elegance.” 

“Yes,” said I, “ woman will feel nothing too desperate 
for love.” 

“ No,” said he, gravely, “love was out of the question ; 
the wonder was wrought by gratitude.” 

I ordered supper, trimmed our fire, and he gave me the 
illustration. 





\ 




THE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 

HEBE. 


V - ' ~r< ”, ' . . 

CHAPTER I. 

There is no lovelier portion of Europe than the slope 
'of the Carpathian mountains looking to Waliachia. An 
undulating belt of country thirty miles broad, and reach¬ 
ing from the Pruth to the Danube, is covered with vine¬ 
yards ^nd orchards in the full luxuriance of a climate, 
whose summer sun shines with the lire of the East on a 
soil watered by innumerable streams. 

As the country rises, the scenery becomes magnificent. 
Immense obelisks and piles of every coloured marble 
start up among (he forests } perpetual cascades thunder 
from inaccessible heights ; glittering pinnacles, wild 
caverns, and precipices steep as a wall, and sheeted with 
forest flowers and shrubs df singular fragrance and rich¬ 
ness of colour, remind the traveller of Switzerland, but of 
Switzerland under an almost oriental sky. 

The Wallachian noble, however, sees but little of this 
fine country, and in general prefers paying his court to 
the Hospodar in Bucharest; where, in the midst of alter¬ 
nate dust and mire, he idles away life between sleep, 
cards, and the formal visiting and dull assemblies of his 
brother boyars. 

But there are, in all countries and classes, a few left 
to show what the rest might have been, and vindicate the 
original capacities of the people. Some of the boyars, 
either taught by foreign travel, disgusted with the submis¬ 
sions required at their court, or impelled by a nobler 
-nature, have fixed themselves among their mountains, and 
Vol. I.—9 





98 


THE WALLACE I AX *S TALE. 


exhibited the purity, manliness, and intelligence of a life 
unstained by the corruption of the capital. 

One of those recluses was the boyar Gregorio Canta- 
cuzcne, a generous and accomplished noble, who, after 
long service in the Hungarian cavalry, had turned his 
lance into a ploughshare, and his sabre into a reaping- 
hook, and come to settle himself at the foot of a proud 
peak, from which lay beneath him a horizon like an 
ocean of verdure. 

His rank was high, his fortune was large, and his pal¬ 
pable superiority to his order made him important in the 
eyes of the successive Hospodars, a race of sovereigns, 
who, as the native proverb says, u are crowned with a 
curse, and rewarded with its completion.” But he had 
seen the thrones of Europe, and he disdained to connect 
himself with men purchasing power like slaves, to surren¬ 
der it like criminals, and perpetually either meditating 
feeble rebellion, or bending tiieir necks to the bow-string. 

He suffered the honours and intrigues of Bucharest 
equally to pass by him ; cultivated his grounds, protected 
his peasantry, arid relaxed his hours with literature ; the 
performance of a fine orchestra, which he had raised among 
the children of an orphan school founded on his estate; 
and even with classic hopes and dreams on that great dis¬ 
turbing event which was yet to take years before it ripened 
into the Greek insurrection. 

Symptoms of this turn of his thoughts might have been 
discovered in his whole conduct. Since the day of his 
retirement from the Austrian service, a word of German 
never escaped his lips, and as little of the mingled Latin 
and Slavonic that makes the common language of his 
country. The Turkish, though on every side, no menial 
dared to utter in his presence. He spoke Greek alone, 
in that dialect which is to be still found among the Wal- 
lachians, and whose purity more closely approaches the 
Hellenic than any other remaining. He wore neither the 
Osmanlee robes of his brother boyars, nor even the native 
costume ; the caftan and the calpac were alike rejected. 
He wore the dress of the ancient Greek. 

Herodotus, the vivid narrative of Xenophon, and the 
clear and forcible details of Thucydides, were his historic 



HEBE. 


99 


models. His poets were Homer, iEschylus, and Rhiga. 
The two great fathers of the epic and the drama, he placed 
at the summit of human genius ; he worshipped them 
throned on the twin peaks of Parnassus ; but his scarcely 
deeper devotion was kindled by the alternate melancholy 
and power, the fiery indignation, and more than sepulchral 
sorrow, of the great and unfortunate patriot of his own 
day. 

When on service at Vienna, he had accidentally met 
Rhiga, and was struck with the genius and eloquence of 
that extraordinary man The meeting gave a sudden 
turn to his life The dissipations of the court, all open 
to the young and animated soidier, lost their interest at 
once ; he broke up all those pursuits to which his fortune 
and rank might have tempted him ; he became a student 
of the nobler arts of life ; and looked with equal disdain 
upon the brilliant frivolity in which the Viennese nobles 
trifle away existence, and the heavy and mindless self-in¬ 
dulgence in which the Wallachian dreams down to the 
grave. 

The determination to do something for which his name 
would yet be remembered, or to raise his country from 
the humiliation in which she lay before the eyes of Europe, 
and awake her to a knowledge of her own resources of 
nature and of mind, became the reigning passion of his 
soul. 

But to pursue those objects in the giddy routine of the 
court was impossible. He had lost his wife a few years 
before ; his only son had been sent from Vienna to be 
reared in the mountain air of his estate ; and thus, with 
the world before him, he dissolved his last remaining lie 
to \ustria by resigning his colonelcy of the guard ; and 
before the talkers of the capital had ceased to wonder 
and doubt, Cantaeuzene was on his travels through Europe. 

After three years, a note from Rhiga brought him back. 
It contained a dispiriting statement of the difficulties 
which still retarded the progress of Greece ; but concluded 
by saying, that brighter days might soon dawn, and that 
he was on the point of going to Servia, to assist in the 
liberation of that unhappy country His friend saw ruin 
in the attempt, and flew back to warn the victim. 




iuo 


THE WALLACHIAft’s TALE. 


They passed together the last evening that saw Rhiga 
in Vienna ; and the noble Wallachian often described it 
as the most memorable evening of his life, he had never 
seen the vigour of the Greek’s genius so strongly marked 
as in the long details which he then gave of his hopes and 
determinations. Always eloquent, his eloquence on that 
day glowed with double ardour ; his spirit seemed to look 
into futurity with the combined clearness of the prophet 
and the rapture of the bard. But it was in vain that his 
friend pointed out the dubious policy of Austria, the 
treachery of the agents that served alike the cause of sla¬ 
very and freedom, and the notorious bloodthirstiness of 
the Turk. 

Rhiga had made up his mind. He was weary of incer¬ 
titude, and his powerful understanding gave way to his 
impatience of dealing with the feebleness and craftiness 
of men whom he had wasted half his days in toiling to 
rouse to a sense of their own dignity. 

“ What is the life of man but a vapour?” exclaimed 
the Greek ; “ and, since it must pass away, who would 
not rather that it rose like incense from the altar of his 
country’s freedom, than that it sank only to add to the 
pestilence from his grave?” 

Those were the parting words of Rhiga, as this high¬ 
hearted being tore himself from the boyar’s embrace at 
the gates of Vienna. He was never seen more. A party 
of Turkish horse were already on his path : he was seized 
on the Servian frontier, and in three days his head was 
blackening in the sun on the ramparts of Belgrade. 

The death of this singular and admirable man broke up 
the associations which his energy had called into existence, 
and Cantacuzene retired to his estates, to dedicate his 
life to the surer means of renovating his country, by show¬ 
ing how much might be done by a noble determined on 
doing his duty. 

He found his large possessions a desert; the marauding 
rabble, that under the various names of gipsies, miners, 
and shepherds, rove through the Hospodai iates, had taken 
possession of the most fertile spots ; and the wolf and the 
wild boar were lords of the remainder. 

He applied himself with manliness and intelligence to 
the remedy ; and he succeeded, as such means will always 


HEBE. 


101 


succeed. In a few years his estate was a garden ; of 
which the plunderers were either vigorously repelled, or 
humanely subdued into a peaceable and active peasantry. 

His opulence and power excited, as usual, the jealousy 
of the Portfe, and he was offered high rank at. the court of 
the Hospodar. Cut he was weary of the scene, and 
pleaded increasing years. The offer was renewed with 
the additional lure of an appointment for his son in the 
Albanian cavalry of the Porte, Cantacuzene, conscious 
that this was but a new artifice of that habitual jealousy 
which is determined to have a hold upon every subject, 
declined the offer, perilous as might be the result of dis¬ 
obeying the will of the sultan. 

But the bow-string passed him by for the time, and the 
ofler was only more pressingly renewed. He still resisted : 
but the solicitations of his friends, and still more the en¬ 
treaties of his ambitious and ardent son, in part prevailed ; 
and, with an ominous sigh, the father buckled the scimitar 
on his Constantine, and sent him to gather honours under 
the sultan. 

Cut the boyar's paternal feelings were not left altogether 
without an object. Among the barbarian kinds of traffic 
existing in those border countries of Christianity and Ma¬ 
hometanism, the sale of children is not unfrequent. The 
perpetual conflicts of the various tribes producing hurried 
flights, the breaking-up of families, and that deepest misery 
which makes the harassed parents glad to see their children 
even in slavery, where they are secure of bread, largely 
supply this repulsive traffic. But in the general scene of 
devastation, the most formidable ruin follows the track'of 
the gangs of declared robbers, who, without country or 
faith, are Servians, Transylvanians, and Turks, as suits 
them for the hour. To those the merchant and the tra¬ 
veller, the peasant and the peaceable of every kind, are 
the natural prey; and against those the force of the Hos- 
podariates was constantly in arms. 

In an excursion at the head of his peasantry to break 
up a camp of those marauders on the ridge of the Carpa¬ 
thian, Cantacuzene had succeeded in surrounding a con¬ 
siderable body that defended themselves desperately from 

9 * 


102 


THE WALLACHIAlPs TALE. 


cliff to cliff, until they were driven into a defile, where 
they must either surrender or perish of famine. 

The boyar, willing to spare human life, offered them 
conditions on giving up their arms and plunder. The 
robbers, of whom the chief part were disbanded soldiery, 
passed across the frontier. The peasantry were enriched 
by a large spoil of the spoilers, and the boyar returned 
home, glad to hang up his sabre, and turn over his volumes 
once more. 

A few days after the expedition, he was suprised by the 
return of one of the captains of the broken banditti, who 
came to offer him a child for sale. The fellow had con¬ 
trived to conceal it, in the general restitution ; expecting 
that its extreme beauty would remunerate him for his 
other losses. 

Cantacuzene purchased the infant from the robber, who 
could give no other account of it than that it had been 
carried off from a cottage in Hungary, where a Greek 
lady, on her way to France, had given it birth, and died. 

He adopted the infant, called it by a name expressive 
of its loveliness, and employed some of the happiest years 
of his life in training the glowing and grateful spirit of his 
young Hebe. 

But he was now to be left no longer to the enjoy¬ 
ment of his philosophic solitude. The ambition of the 
French emperor, in 1804, had disturbed even those torpid 
regions. The Hospodars, lpsilanti and Morousi, were 
too much connected with Russia to suffer their continu¬ 
ance, under the French system, which had begun to govern 
the Porte ; and in 1805, Alexander Sutzo, a Greek but a 
known^nemy of Russian connexion, was appointed Prince 
of Wallachia. 

It is the indispensable custom for the nobles to receive 
the new Hospodar with public honours ; and Cantacu- 
zene took with him a train suitable to his high rank. 
Hebe, strangely startled at the journey, implored to be 
left behind ; and no request of hers would have been 
resisted, but for the boyar’s secret purpose to try how far 
her graces and talents might touch his son. He was anx¬ 
ious to see him married ; he had birth and wealth enough 
to choose for himself; and if Constantine was to be 
charmed by beauty, he might be the husband of the love 
best girl within sight of the Carpathians. 













HEBE. ' 103 


CHAPTER II. 

The young Greek had received the announcement of 
the journey with terror -, and she gave herself up to such 
undissembled distress,- that Cantacuzene, in surprise, re¬ 
tracted his order. But the pale cheek had scarcely turned 
to red, and the feeble step recovered its buoyancy at the 
change, when all was worse than ever. Silence or sighs 
were on the lips of the fair Hebe ; and she wandered 
through the apartments with the heaviness of one that had 
met with some formidable calamity. Cantacuzene had 
seen too much of human nature, and known too much of 
that most resistless portion of it, the nature of the fair, to 
suppose that he could extract a direct answer to his in¬ 
quiry into this new sorrow. But h6 ordered supper in his 
favourite seat, an alcove that looked over a delicious 
extent of vineyard and plains, and bade Hebe bring her 
rebec,* and give him a song. 

The singer’s voice was sweet; and as he looked upon 
her form, the brightness of her eye, and the tender rose 
<hat the expression of her song brought into her cheek, he 
regretted that a little caprice should thwart a plan so sure 
of succeeding. 

“ Impossible,” thought he, 44 that any human being, 
capable of distinguishing between beauty and deformity, 
can overlook the singular attractions of this fine and vivid 
creature.” 

The song had ceased, and Hebe was sitting with the re¬ 
bec silent on her knee, and her eyes fixed on the distant 
valley. She was but sixteen ; yet the female form in those 
countries acquires an early perfection ; and Hebe might 
have sat to a statuary for 'the fairest model of a melan¬ 
choly muse. 

44 Come,” said Cantacuzene, 14 child, you look the very 
image of an idler. Have I heard all your songs, or will 
you improvise ?” She smiled, shook away a tear from 
her black eyelashes, and began one of the long rambling 

* A species of lute common on the Danube. 


# 



104 


THE WALLACHLAN’s TALE. 


airs that the miners chaunt to any words that chance in 
spires, praises of the hospitality of the boyars, petitions for 
alms, or fairy adventures that seem as if they could go on 
for ever. 

To the astonishment of her hearer, the few first wan¬ 
derings of thought iu which the hnprovisatore hovers over 
the subject, like a bird fluttering before it takes flight, were 
followed by an animated praise of social life. The song 
contrasted the monotony, the loneliness, and the lifeless¬ 
ness of the country, with the various animation of cities ; 
and of all cities, first and fondest, the capital of the prin¬ 
cipality. 

Cantacuzene listened to this glowing palinode with 
wonder; but the reality of her expression told him that 
she was in earnest,and he congratulated her on the fortunate 
change of her sentiments. iShe answered, that since the 
time when she had been ungracious enough to hesitate at 
his command, she had deeply regretted her disobedience.. 
The quick Seating of her heart, and the burning crimson 
that overspread her cheek as she spoke, told that her rea¬ 
son was one beyond the reach of argument. 

But the boyar had no desire to waste his victory, and 
leave room for another change. He pressed her forehead 
with his lips; called her his beloved child, his dear 
daughter; attributed her starting at the words to the 
timidity of the sex ; ordered his equipages to be ready for 
the road by day-break ; and left her to follow, when the 
manifold and mysterious preparations for a lady’s journey 
could be got ready. 

The famous city of Bucharest ought to have been 
planted on the eastern side of the Propontis ; for it is 
thoroughly Asiatic. If it have not as many pilgrims as 
Bagdad, it has as many beggars. If the cry of Allah il 
Allah does not deafen the ear, that organ does not escape 
much better from the eternal jargon of the Slavonic, Hun¬ 
garian, and Lingua Franca, that clamours its “aves” 
through the streets. 

There are in both cities almost the same amount of dogs, 
Jews, devotees, and doers-of-nothing. If the Turkish 
female is covered with a veil, the Christian face is nearly 
as invisible from an abhorrence of ablution. If the streets 













HEBE. 


105 


ol Bagdad are dry ditches that admit of only two people 
abreast, the streets of Bucharest are wet ditches, that out 
of every three passengers threaten to drown at least one, 
It the former have ruinous houses that promise to fall upon 
the Arab population every hour, and not seldom keep their 
promise ; the other has three hundred and sixty churches 
exactly in the same condition. 

But not to extend the similitude till doomsday, it may 
be said that they both look picturesque and glittering 
enough to the stranger a few miles off, from being built in 
the midst of plantations and gardens ; that they both unde* 
eeive the stranger rapidly on his entrance ; that they both 
contain a vast deal of folly, squalidness, and roguery ; that 
the world would not miss the one more than the other; 
and that the sooner a man is out of both, the better for 
his purse, his ears, his olfactories, and the colour of his 
costume. 

It would perplex a new Buffon to give a definition of 
the true Noble of Bucharest, unless it is to be done bv 
negatives. 

A boyar is an animal with legs, who never walks ; 
with a tongue, who never speaks; with an understanding, 
who never thinks; with a conscience, who seldom knows 
a distinction between right and wrong ; and with, it is sup- 
posed^ a soul, who leaves the care of it, from five years old 
to five score, to a French tutor, a Greek priest, or to 
chance, perhaps the safest of the three. 

But, be it told for the edification of the proud in all 
lands, that pride flourishes in its broadest luxuriance 
among those exalted and useful, personages. 

The boyars soar above the shallow pedigrees of the rest 
of Europe; laugh to scorn the sixteen quarterings of the 
German and Hungawan magnificoes; scoff at the Vene* 
tian Libro d’Oro ; push up their genealogies above the 
degenerate Romans to the Scythians who fought Cyrus 
and Darius ; and fairly establish their right to be consi¬ 
dered next to the white bears, the most northerly and an¬ 
cient savages in the creation. 

The young and lovely Greek, romantic from thecradle, 
and trained with the fine eye that enjoys the slightest trace 
of natural beauty, was delighted with the distant view of 
the city, and as the pompous train of her adopted father’s 


10G 


TIIE WALLACIJIAls’s TALE. 


horsemen and equipages swept across the level fields at 
the debouche into the plain. Site saw nothing in their* 
immeasurable flatness and smoothness but a paradise, 
where every bird of the air and beast of the field might 
rove and delight itself without fear of man. 

But when Bucharest displayed itself with the western 
sun sheeting its roofs and spires with gold, and the sound 
of its innumerable bells coming softened to her ear, she 
clasped her hands, and wept in delight at the fairy vision. 

Within an hour more she was tossing and thrown from 




rut to rut, in streets that forbade the lii/ht of day ; she was 
surrounded with ragged and hideous beings, howling and 
fighting ; she glanced into houses that looked too wretched 
for dungeons, and saw human beings that looked too 
wretched for the houses ; and, w'hen completely tired, 
terrified, and cured of giving way to first impressions, she 
had pronounced Bucharest a living sepulchre, she was 
ushered into a marble vestibule, leading into a suite of 
apartments hung with cloth of gold, blazing with silver 
lamps, and crowded with attendants covered with em¬ 
broidery. 

She passed from room to room in an astonishment that 
deprived her of the power of asking questions ; and by the 
time that she had been cured of trusting to second im¬ 
pressions more than to first, she reached the door of a 
chamber guarded by chasseurs in magnificent liveries, and 
saw within, upon a sofa like a throne, the boyar Canta- 


cuzene. 

“Welcome, my child,” said he; “you see me sur¬ 
rounded with unwilling honours. It has pleased the Hos- 
podar to take advantage of my coming, and call me into 
service, when I should infinitely rather be riding over my 
fields. Our ploughmen and vine-dressers satisfy my eye 
better than all the very fine personages that encumber us 
here ; but the sovereign’s will is law ; and here l sit por- 
tarbashi* of the Hospodariate, until Sutzo arrives, finds 
me too rustic for a courtier, and sends me rejoicingly to 
our mountains again. The experiment will not be long 
delayed, for the prince enters Bucharest to-morrow. But 


* A minister for foreign affairs, and chiefly corresponding with the 
Turkish court. 











HEBE. 


i 07 


there is one topic, my Hebe, which is nearer to my heart 
than those idle exhibitions I have from your infancy 
loved you as a daughter of our line. Providence be¬ 
queathed you to me; and J trust that from the hour in 
\vhich l took the charge, 1 have not been careless of a duty 
bound on me alike by honour and affection.” 

Hebe, with the large tears coursing down her cheeks, 
like dew-drops on the peach, fell on her knees, and kissed 
his hand in speechless gratitude. He raised her, and, 
with a glance of paternal admiration, seated her by his 
side, and entreated her attention to the only command that 
he would ever lav upon her. 

“ My H ebe, you must marry. Life is uncertain under 
every sky ; but the government of the sultan puts the ex¬ 
istence of his nobles in such hazard, that the only security 
is, their not being worth his plunder or his suspicion. I 
must see your happiness, at least, secure.” 

The young Greek looked* up at him in mingled terror 
for herself and her benefactor. u Then you, my father, 
must be marked by this hideous tyranny. Your rank, but 
above all your character, must be crimes to the Ottoman. 
The friend of his country and of human nature must be 
hated by the oppressor. Let us hasten from this place, 
from this country ; let us fly to some of the lovely lands of 
Europe, the free spots where man is not prohibited from 
every thing but guilt. ; where he is not forced to feel it in 
the power of a slave of the seraglio to destroy at a mo¬ 
ment the labours of a life of benevolence ; where the noble 
aspirations of genius and virtue are not like the struggles 
of the eagle in a cage, every effort to use the powers that 
nature gave but dashing him against his bars, and leaving 
his bosoip bare and bleeding.” 

“I have often thought of this, my child ; but what is 
life after all ? or what is the great lesson taught us by its 
shortness, and the infinite perils that make every hour one 
on which we may be plunged into another state of being, 
but that we should value it only for its uses ; that we 
should not for the mere purpose of prolonging it, a pur¬ 
pose clearly beyond our powers, throw away the oppor¬ 
tunity of expending such years as may be allotted to us, in 
the service of mankind; and leave our place in that por- 





THE WALLACIIIAN’s TALE. 


IDS 

lion of mankind among whom nature or fortune has allot¬ 
ted it? in this Turned country, among this benighted 
population, I am fixed ; it is my first duty to try to the 
uttermost what can be done to enlighten its ignorance, 
and raise it from its ruin. If but few among our nobles 
think with me, there is the more necessity for the labours 
of those few. Besides, my Hebe—for your ingenuous 
mind is worthy of knowing every thought that can fill the 
heart with honour and resolution—what are we but the 
creatures of a power which will do its high pleasure in defi¬ 
ance of man ? The Mahometan meets the chance of death 
in a sullen belief that so it must be ; we meet the chance 
in a lofty and hallowed conviction that so it ought to be. 
If that high pleasure be to protect us, not all the ferocity 
of all the sultans can touch a hair of our heads. But if the 
hour be come, how can we meet it with more confidence, 
dignity, and honour, than in the fearless and devoted ex¬ 
ercise of the talent that Providence has given ?” 

There was silence between them for a while. The no¬ 
ble philosopher sat wrapped in boding thoughts of the 
future. The •young Greek, alternately crimson and pale 
as the lily, was agitated at once by fears for her adopted 
father, and by emotions more tumultuous, though not 
deeper. 

At last the boyar, starting from his scat, pressed her to 
his bosom, and laying his hand, as in benediction, on her * 
forehead, said : “ Now, my child, go to rest. To-morrow 
we shall have a busy day ;—to-morrow, too, you shall see 
the noble whom I have chosen for your husband.” 

* With these words he left the room. Hehe tottered after 
him. Her ears rang, her eyes were dim : she blindly felt 
her way towards the door, but it was already closed. She 
tried to speak ; her tongue refused to utter a word. She 
sank beside the sofa. The moonlight glowing on her 
figure at length startled her with her own image in one of 
the immense mirrors. For a few moments her mind, en¬ 
feebled and overwhelmed, almost believed that an appari¬ 
tion lifted those tossing arms, and knelt with such dis¬ 
tracted prayer before h*r. But she soon felt the reality of 
her anguish, and dreading alike to look round her and to 
think, she feebly reached her chamber. 





itEiJE. 


10L* 


CHAPTER Ill. 

The next was a busy day. The whole eighty thousand 
Souls of the city, the greater part with bodies that it might 
have perplexed Blumenbach to class among any known 
race above the quadruped, poured into the streets at day¬ 
light, or were employed in hanging their decorations of 
curtain, caftan, and carpet, old as the conquest of the pro¬ 
vince, from the windows. The city looked like an enor¬ 
mous Tartar caravansera ; and the inhabitants did no in¬ 
justice, by the comeliness of their countenances or the 
grace of their drapery, to the sons of the Great Table Land 
of the nor th. 

The rejoicings were as anomalous as the people ; for 
every thing capable of producing souiid was in full exer¬ 
cise from day-break. The bells of the three hundred and 
sixty churches pealed loud enough to deafen the whole 
population ; cannon roared, trumpets blasted, horns 
howled, trombones brayed, and incessant musketry rattled 
close to the ear of the passer-by, lucky if he escaped the 
ball put into the charge, not to kill him, but to make the 
report louder, though if it killed him, no man inquired into 
an accident so natural to a day of general joy. 

In the midst of this ragged tumult moved by, from time 
to time, some Turkish officer, magnificent in fur and shawl,, 
and reigning a barb that seemed proud of its caparison, 
and longing to get loose from the earth; or the state-coach 
of a boyar, used, like his hearse, for the first and the last 
time, a ponderous pile of gilding put together for the day ; 
or a troop of the body-guard dashing among the rabble, 
that the whole force of the principality could not have kept 
quiet; the entire covered in suffocating clouds of dust, 
and under a sun that would have scorched an Ethiop ; a 
mingling of grandeur and mendicancy, discomfort and re¬ 
joicing, that could be shown by none but a half oriental, 
half European city—a border receptacle for the oddities^ 
extravagancies, and pomps of East and West in one. 

Vol. I.—JO 


110 


TIIE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


Cantacuzene was a man of magnificent tastes, which 
he knew well how to exhibit; and his habits of foreign 
life saved him the extraordinary contrasts of meanness and 
splendour to be perpetually found among his brother 
nobles. 

In saying that the horses to his six carriages were neither 
blind nor lame, that his harnesses were not ropes, his coach¬ 
men half-naked gipsies, nor his guards something between 
beggars and banditti, enough is said to draw the line be¬ 
tween his appearance on that day, and the proudest exhi¬ 
bition made by the majority of the proud lords of the soil 
of Wallachia. 

Sorrow sits light upon the young ; and Hebe, when the 
pompous equipage in which she sat with the boyar 
emerged from streets hot as an oven, and echoing like a 
den of wild beasts with yells innumerable, into the open 
air of the country, then in the first freshness and fragrance 
of spring, felt as the bird feels, let loose from its cage. 

The boyar’s graver spirit was touched too; but he 
thought of his mountains, and of the long and anxious 
scenes that he might have to undergo before he was to sit 
once more among his books, and from his favourite ve¬ 
randa look over his delicious landscape. 

But the sound of cannon announced the approach of 
the Hospodar. Both felt the sound ominous without 
knowing why, and Hebe placed her hand in the cold hand 
of her father as a pledge that, let come what will, she 
would follow his fortunes to the last. 

The sovereign procession was soon seen glittering on 
the hills. Detachments of spahis made way through the 
multitude. The crowd of Turkish functionaries who came 
with every new Hospodar to fatten on these unlucky prin¬ 
cipalities, came caracoling their showy Arabians ; and at 
the close of a long train moved Prince Sutzo, thje mon¬ 
arch, who, if titles could ensure him an easy supremacy, 
would have few equals in the downiness of his throne. 
This or u Most High Serene Highness ; 

Bey ; God’s Anointed ; Hospodar ; this compound of 
glories Greek, German, Turkish, Wallachian, and Russ, 
looked like a man at the point of death, condemned to be 
suffocated by furs, jewelled chains, and purpled cloth. 


HEBE. 


Ill 


But his kukka* had been laid on his weary brow by the 
Nuzhur aga, and his robe of honour had been thrown 
over his burning shoulders by no humbler hands than those 
of the grand vizier. 

It is true that a month or week might see them trans¬ 
ferred to another, and the Hospodar’s shoulders without 
a head ; but what man ever resisted the temptation of 
being, even for one week, the most exposed to chance of 
any living being, the most harassed, the most responsible, 
and the most unthanked of millions—a king ? 

But the universal shout arose when the Albanian horse- 
guard of the prince poured over the plain. Their mount¬ 
ing and caparison were superb ; their rapidity of move¬ 
ment was striking even among the dashing cavalry of the 
Turks ; and their distinction in the field had been acquired 
by a long course of desperate exploits, alike against Eu¬ 
ropean and Asiatic enemies. At the head of those gal¬ 
lant squadrons rode, with the chelenkt in his turban, in 
the prime of youth, and glowing with military pride, the 


son of Cantacuzene. 

The boyar’s eye was filled, as he looked on the showy 
and martial figure whom he had sent away a few years 
since, scarcely beyond boyhood. A few words of ardent 
recognition passed as the cavalry moved on. Hebe, 
blushing and alarmed, heard her name pronounced by the 
young soldier with high expressions of his delight at her 
• increased beauty ; and from that moment until the caval¬ 
cade entered the city gates, and she found herself alone 
in her chamber, she scarcely knew whether she was awake 


or in a dream. 

But some words of terror floated on her memory above 
j all this confusion of thought, like fragments of wreck 
above the waters, to show the working of the storm. 

u There is your husband,” sounded in her ears. The 
rest was scattered among recollections too painful, and 
still too vague for her to give them shape. She remem¬ 
bered the astonished look of the boyar at her evident 
alarm, his entreaty that she would not throw away her 


* Military crest. 

| A diamond plume of honour given by the sultan. 




THE WALLAOHIAN’S TALE. 


112 

fairest hope of happiness, his displeasure at the caprice of 
the female mind ; but those were all like clouds passing 
over her memory ; and the more she attempted to bring 
back that momentous conversation, the more it seemed to 
bathe all her powers, 

A long succession of balls and public festivities on the 
inauguration of the prince occupied some weeks 4 and 
Hebe’s loveliness, not less conspicuous from the simpli¬ 
city of the Greek dress to which she adhered with patri¬ 
otic pride in the midst of the heavy opulence of the cos¬ 
tume worn by the wives of the boyars, was the universal 
topic. 

Her cultivated talents added to the attraction ; and, if 
the Turkish dignitaries were incapable of valuing more 
than her beauty ; or the native nobles listened to her lan¬ 
guage, her skill on the lute, or her touching voice, only 
as they might have listened to a syren of the opera ; the 
accomplished homage of the European officers and stran¬ 
gers of rank stamped her with fame. 

Cantacuzene had found no difficulty in persuading his 
son to the marriage. The young soldier’s ardent tempe¬ 
rament had been inflamed from the first glance. Even 
had she charmed him less, his pride would have been de¬ 
lighted with carrying off the prize from so many ad¬ 
mirers. To triumph was his passion, whether it were in the 
richness of his dress, or the renown of his squadrons, the 
beauty of his charger, or the beauty of his wife. He had 
figured at Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople ; and whether 
at the gaming-table, or in the ball room, in the sumptuous 
festivities and brilliant flirtations of the two great European 
capitals of the loves and graces, or in the perilous pur¬ 
suits of the sullen city of the dungeon and the bow-string, 
he had found no superior. 

He received his father’s proposition with rapture ; flew 
through the long vista of stately halls to the apartment 
where the young Greek sat gazing with full and fixed eyes 
towards the mountains ; declared his passion ; and while 
his ear waited a moment to hear it answered in sounds of 
supreme gratitude, to his inconceivable astonishment, 
heard it firmly and finally rejected. 



HEBE. 


113 


i 


CHAPTER IV. 

Among the displays of this time of festivity, a company 
of Italian figurantes and opera-singers had made their way 
to Bucharest. The Italian proverb says that, “ monks and 
mosquitos are to be found in every part of the world.” 
Where the monks are not, the mosquitos' are. But when 
they are together, wo be to mankind. 

The Italians are a compound of both. They lay a na¬ 
tional claim to be livers upon what they can suck from 
the superfluities of the body-corporate wherever they go. 
They are to be found in every spot of the earth, perpetually 
on the wing, with no more local habitation than the mos¬ 
quito, and with as much mind as the monk,to extract the 
last denier where they happen to settle They issue yearly, 
as soon as the sun warms them out of their Alpine sleep, 
into the atmosphere of every climate of the world ; with 
no plan of life but that of preying upon all, and with a 
general determination never to see the spot from which 
the swarm issued, but as full as they can hold of the sub¬ 
stance of all. They are not fastidious in their prey, and 
will feed on a peasant as soon as on a prince of the 
empire. 

They are never at a los3 ; for any rejected trade, pur¬ 
suit, or pretext will answer their ambition. In Germany, 
they tell fortunes, and flourish behind carriages. In 
France, they sweep chimneys, kennels, and shoes. In 
England, they exhibit monkeys, grind organs, and are the 
exclusive masters of Punch. In Poland, they perplex 
the Israelites by superior usury. In Russia, they do all 
those things together, and are teachers and tutors besides, 
which may account for the morals of the patrician popula¬ 
tion. They would be Christian Jews, but for the double^ 
doubt whether the majority are Christians at all, and whe¬ 
ther they ever desire to set foot in their own country 
again. 


114 


TIIE WALLACHIAjBs TALE. 


But the opera species is the most universal, the mos? 
restless, and the most plundering—the most Italian of the 
whole genus. Some of those brilliant insects have been 
known to fasten on the plethoric purse of a mighty noble, 
and sting him down to his last piastre. Great warriors 
have stopped in the full career of victory, to watch the flut¬ 
tering ol those gilded and silken minions. Kings and em¬ 
perors have suffered the wheels of the world to pause, 
while they listened to their humming. 

The opera swarm that had just alighted on the bustling 
capital of the Hospodariate, were not the most dazzling 
of their kind. But they had the native faculties; and the 
boyars were dazzled, fascinated, and in .due time very 
thoroughly purse-stung. The Wallachian matrons gave 
themselves no concern on the subject, so long as it disen¬ 
cumbered them of the heavy presence of their lords ; the 
maidens cared as little, while it left them the German offi¬ 
cers to figure with ; and, as the women give the tone in 
every land but the land of the Moslemin, when they were 
happy, who dared be discontented ? 

The Italians w r ere as happy as the rest, and with more 
substantial reason. Their talents were various, and they 
were all employed. They gave dinners, with hazard after 
the dessert; they gave select balls, with the liberty of re¬ 
tiring to faro in the next room ; and more select than all 
they gave petits soupers , the most exquisite things in the 
world ; for a thousand crowns a head, punctually disbursed 
after them on a rouge-et noir table, was the very lowest 
price. Their public exhibitions were crowded* in the 
most stifling degree, for they were fashionable ; and they 
were fashionable, because not one hearer m a hundred 
could understand a syllable, 

This triumph might have gone on forever; and the 
VVallachians might have imagined, like the English and 
other descendants of the Goths, that they w ere enchanted. 
But Italian avarice was on the point of accomplishing its 
own ruin, 

At once to make money, and to indulge the theatrical 
thirst for publicity, the “ poet” of the company was put 
at the head of a little journal,” in which the affairs of 
Europe occupied a corner, and the merits, injuries, arnf 
anecdotes of the opera occupied the rest. 


hebe;. 


115 


But too much knowledge is often more fatal than too 
much ignorance ; as a man will die of waking, though he 
never dies of sleep. 

From the luckless period in which the Italian gazet¬ 
teers unveiled the secrets of the prison-house, and taught 
the ignoble multitude to talk at their ease of the Sostenente 
and Sostenuto family ; of the rehearsal conflicts of Sig¬ 
nor Cantabile and the Signora Contralto, divinest of pri- 
ma-donnas ; and the domestic history of Signor Porto- 
mento and his Signora, equally divine ; the spell was broke, 
mere mortals stood before them ; the royal robes lost 
their glitter, the opera went down ten thousand fathoms 
deep. Like Beaumarchais’ play, when all the world 
were in a secret, the plot was dissolved, and there was 
nothing more to be done but to drop the curtain. 


CHAPTER V. 

The Italians were in despair. The diminished "trea¬ 
sury haunted them. Like greater personages, they cursed 
from the bottom of such souls as they had, the treacherous 
hour when, in the thoughtless avidity to produce public 
partizanship, they had put pen to paper. The men tore, 
the ringlets out of their hair; the women wept the rouge 
off their cheeks ; and both devoted the whole race of 
boyars to purgatory, as asses of the longest-eared species, 
and the whole inferior generation to the deeper miseries of 
listening to their grievances. 

Every garret was a cabal; and the little meagre cafc % 
the sole one in which those itinerant Cimarosas and Paesi- 
ellos ever spent a sol, from its favourite resemblance to a. 
dungeon, and its being below the pocket of even a Walla- 
cbian beggar, was a scene of shrugs, grimaces, and recrL 
minaiions immitigable, implacable, and ridiculous beyond 
1 pleasure. 

The green-room was in open insurrection, and the T6* 








216 


THE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 


hearsals regularly broke up in a civil war of scowls under 
ferocious brows and significant threats of the vengeance 
that might couch in a basin of vermicelli, or be coiled in 
a string of macaroni. 

But the wheel of fortune gave a sudden whirl. A sig¬ 
nora, stopping from none knew what propitious star, alight¬ 
ed at the door of the theatre, and requested an immediate 
engagement. She brought no credentials ; she had not 
a line to any lover of song or beauty among the great. 
She did not threaten the manager with the undying ven¬ 
geance of any of those resistless patrons, prince or banker, 
who insist so furiously upon seeing justice done to the sig¬ 
noras fortunate enough to have the honour of their appro¬ 
bation. 

Her merits rested on mqch more uncommon grounds ; 
she had talent, and she asked no ruinous salary. 

The Italians well knew the value of her face, her figure, 
and her voice ; but the offer to play for next to nothing 
put all doubt of her excellence out of the question ; and, 
with many a managerial declaration of the impolicy of over¬ 
loading a stage M already full of the most popular ability, 5 ' 
and many confessions of the u generous desire, which they 
could not restrain, 55 of giving a compatriote an opportunity 
of showing her powers, they allowed her to—make their 
fortunes, if she could. 

Her first appearance decided the point;—she was a 
wonder. Her song, her acting, and her beauty were of 
the highest excellence of her country. 

Travellers, when, fairly feeling themselves escaped from 
the Alps, and rolling along the fat and level lands of Italy, 
without fear of a wolf starting from the mouth of a ravine 
to carry off their post-horses, or an avalanche thundering 
from its summit, to be the monument-of master, equipage, 
and all, they have leisure to look round upon the popula¬ 
tion, may well think with horror on the future doom of 
painters and sculptors, poets and romancers, if their visions 
* of Italian beauty are to he reached by justice. 

Abandoning the Savoyard physiognomy as indescriba¬ 
ble, and marked by nature for its resignation of being seen 
only through soot, they see the nymph of the Mianese, a 
brawny, she-harbarian, with a figure formed on the mode! 




IIEBE. 


m 


her own churn, and a complexion borrowed from her 
own cheeses. Rolling onward, they see la bella Toscana,a 
sullen, heavy-browed being, with negro features, and a co¬ 
lour scarcely nearer the human. The Roman skin they find 
wrinkled by the sun to the consistence of the oldest parch¬ 
ment ; and the Neapolitan covered with a mask of grime, 
the work ol a whole life undisturbed by washing—a sort of 
native bronze, compounded of dust, heat, tobacco-smoke, 
and the handling of charcoal. 

They ask, in surprise, where did the great artists disco¬ 
ver models for the madonnas and seraphs ? where found 
they the weeping loveliness of their Magdalene sorrow, ov 
the placid pomp of their St. Catharine’s smile ? 

Yet such models are to be found, though rare as a new 
planet; and the singer that came to revive the dead glories 
of the troop was one ol those. She had the vivid force of 
countenance, the falcon eye, the singular wreathing of the 
lip that shapes, of all smiles, the most witching or the 
most scornful. Her figure was imperial, and even her 
most careless attitude conveyed an impression of command. 
Her theatrical talents were instantly acknowledged Her 
voice, magnificent in compass and tone, extinguished all 
competition in the theatre. She trod the stage with the 
alternate majesty of the tragic heroine and the light ness of 
the nymph : and when she retired for the moment, she 
left the most stirring scene divested of its charm. 

The arrival of the Italian gave new animation to the 
court circle, already beginning to be wearied of opera, 
masquerade, and elaborate attempts at the gallantry of 
Paris and Vienna. The polished strangers were writing 
bitter emigrams, and drawing caricatures, to kill the hour ; 
the Russians longed for Moscow, where they might throw 
off their embroidered coats, let their beards follow the 
course of nature, and drink quass when they were tired of 
brandy, and brandy when they were tired of quass. The 
native Huns honestly yawned in each other’s faces, and 
envied the Laplander his six months’ escape from the light 
of day. 

But the tide of pleasure had now begun to flow again 
The theatre, that matchless resource of the vacant souls 
*f mankind ; that essential of life to the Far-niente world ; 




118 


THE WALLACHIAlv’s TALE. 


before the scenes giving topics to the multitude, and be¬ 
hind the scenes to the select—the theatre, that alike by 
its dulness and its gayety, its pleasantries and its misfor¬ 
tunes, supplies the ten thousand morning visits with the 
use of speech, until evening comes again to refresh the 
withered fallows of the coteries with just dew enough to 
keep their weeds alive—the theatre was raised once more 
into the leading theme, and nothing w as wanting to the 
perfection of its celebrity, but to he burned to the ground 
by accident, and rebuilt by subscription. Even the su¬ 
premacy of the Signora Seraphina’s shake, and the Signora 
Cherubina’s sol-fa, was luckily settled ; for there could 
be no rivalry to the Italian ; and the company still trembled 
at the very thought of a pen. 

The new gayety of the theatre transpired in the new 
.gayety of the court, which expanded itself in bo’atings on 
the Hellesteo, that Avernian lake, on w hose burning bor¬ 
ders a thousand carriages of every kind of craziness are to 
be seen on every gala-day, threatening to discharge the 
whole noblesse of Bucharest into its compost of mud and 
water ; a destiny which any man but a boyar would prefer 
to roasting, dusting, and deafening,'that await those pa¬ 
tient philosophers on their corso of scorching sand. 

But fashion is exclusive in all countries, from the Tartar 
Steppe to the English drawing-room ; and even the Boneza 
with all its distance from the ruder pleasures of the crowd, 
its novelty of a green field and a grove, send the singularity 
of the habitable boyar-house of Vakaresko, were too much 
within the popular access for fashion. The grand con¬ 
summating ball given by the noblesse to their sovereign 
iv as uxed ai a distance to which not one native carriage 
in fifty had ever ventured, and from which those who 
might venture could have but faint hope of ever bringing 
back their tottering frames to Bucharest. 

The site ot the ball-room was fixed at three hours’ drive 
irotn the city, in one of the beautiful valleys that, in spite 
of man, still breathe and bloom in a province traversed 
every ten years by the Russian in pursuit of the Turk, and 
by the Turk in pursuit of the Russian. 

The preparations were picturesque, and the entertain- 
. oent became the engrossing topic for a month beforehand. 













HEBE, 


ft almost divided the heart of the great world with the 
Italian. But the charm was wound when it was announced 
that the Italian herself was to be there. 

The whole mass ot the nobility struggled to be at this 
concentration of all rapture ; but they knew that to gratify 
them all was impossible. They only struggled the more. 
When the boyars grew weary of perpetual rejection, their 
wives besieged the unhappy postelnik-marav.* But as he 
could not work miracles, he was compelled to escape 
those fair and fierce petitioners by a sudden complication 
of disorders, which drove him to his bed. But the peti¬ 
tioners, who would have allowed nothing short of death 
to keep tbemse ves from a ball from which they were to 
see half of their intimate acquaintance shut out, could suf¬ 
fer no disease of another to stand between them and their 
tickets. The minister was a Greek, and, with his na¬ 
tional subtlety, when he found the gout, asthma, and his 
whole chronic list failing him, suddenly discovered that he 
was deaf and blind ; this, too, failed him : the ladies krrew 
the ways of courts, and demanded, whether he supposed 
them fools enough not to know that all important business 
was done bv deputy ? 

The Greek had then but one resource between him and 
insurrection. He published an official note, fortified by 
the bulletin of his confessor, that he had made a vow to 
the Panagiaj to do nothing good or evil, directly or indi¬ 
rectly, for a month to come. 

The name of the Panagia shocked the feelings of a 
religious people, who have two hundred and ten saints’ 
days to get through in the year ; and while they were still 
deliberating on sending the Greek another confessor, who 
should teach his conscience another lesson, the day of 
festival arrived. 

All who had received cards, had spent the hours from 
morning till night visiting at the houses of those who had 
not, and declaring that they had been “ totally indifferent 
to the honour.” The rejected washed off’ the discomfit¬ 
ure by declaring that they had not thought it worth their 
while to make known any wish for trifles, which “ any 


* First master of court ceremonies. 


| The Virgin, 




THE WALLACHIASf S TALK. 


}ave had for asking ; that the distance was tre 
; the fete could not but be dull; and the crowd, 
irom the want of discrimination in the grand Postelnik, 
must be on the very verge of Vulgar.” 

The rank of Cantacuzene, and Hebe’s beauty, made 
their presence essential to the fete. But it had no charms 
for either of them. The manliness of the noble shrank 
from this perpetual waste of time, and the young Greek 
seemed to feel a still deeper reluctance. 

Solitary thought was preying on her She rarely smiled. 
She avoided the human presence, and was often heard at 
night wandering through her suite of apartments till 
dawn. Her eyes at morning showed that tears had been 
there ; and her listlessness, silence, and loss of animation, 
in the midst of scenes that set the whole high-born mul¬ 
titude in a tumult of enjoyment, were to be accounted for, 
in the superstition of the country, only by her having been 
smote by an evil eye. 

On this occasion she implored Cantacuzene, with so 
much earnestness, to be spared the fatigue of the f te, 
that he, in alarm at her look of exhaustion, complied. 
Evening fell, his carriages were at the gate, and he was 
coming to take leave of his adopted daughter for the night, 
when, to his astonishment, he met her magnificently at¬ 
tired, her eye sparkling, her cheek glowing, and her light 
and lovely figure as if it trod on air. 

She now implored him again, but it was to be suffered 
“ to change her mind ” The boyar, smiling, and saying 
that he would be the last man to object to the course of 
nature, led her to the carriage. 









JIEBE. 


121 


CHAPTER VI. 

The ball was brilliant. Uniforms of every service, cos¬ 
tumes of every clime, and characters ol every species; 
novelty, eccentricity and splendour, filled the eye. The 
woods echoed with harmony, the air breathed fragrance, 
and the fountains flowed with wine. Fire-works invaded 
the sky with showers of new risen stars ; and looking 
down upon them all, came forth in her majesty the moon, 
round as a shield, and white as the top of Parnassus, to 
put the fire works out of countenance; furnish topics to the 
sentimentalist; similes, not ihe worse for repetition since 
the flood, to the poetic ; light to the admirer of down¬ 
cast beauty ; and to lavish over domes and fountains, pa¬ 
vilions and promenades, sheet on sheet of silver untar¬ 
nished by the world. 

But moon, fireworks, and fine speeches were forgotten, 
when Hebe at length appeared, leaning on the arm of the 
stately boyar. From the farthest extremity of the saloon 
she was seen by the eye of the Hospodar himself, who, as 
she passed into the field of his opera-glass, gave a detail 
of her charms with the precision of science, and stamped 
her at once the wonder of the night. 

A hundred glasses were instantly levelled, whose own¬ 
ers, had she been the twin-sister of Sycorax, would have 
sworn that she eclipsed all beauty present, past, and to 
<come. 

Fashion does much, and the belle who had sustained 
the ordeal of her sovereign’s glass, was allowed to be 
handsome even by the circle on circle of haughty dames 
who surrounded the simplicity of her Greek costume with 
diamond stomachers and tiaras enough to have justified 
an invasion of India, and plumes enough to have stripped 
an empire of ostriches bare. 

But here nature and fashion were for once allied. Hebe’ls 
face and form seemed to have acquired additional loveliness 
from her seclusion : her eye danced, her cheek glowed, a 
V©L. I.—11 





122 


THE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 


tide of involuntary joy was in herheart, and every step wa$ 
buoyant with happiness. Her triumph was acknowledged, 
rivalry shrank, and mothers kept their daughters at a cau¬ 
tious distance ; the Hospodar himself tresspased against 
etiquette in the distribution of his eyes ; the surrounding 
chevaliers were guiltily neglectful of all other attractions. 
Black eagles and white, blue lions and green, the whole 
menagerie of honours moved submissive to her smile ; and 
she had but to frown to bring a sudden mortality among 
heroes and statesmen, and extinguish the court calendar. 

Yet, in the height of triumph, with vows breathing 
round her from a whole army of starred and aiguilleted 
admirers, and her hand engaged for more mazurkas and 
allemandes than could have been toiled through by a 
whole corps de ballet, Hebe was gone. The vision had 
disappeared with visionary swiftness. The announcement 
of supper, which has so often made the fairest of the fair 
but a secondary object, and alienated the most resolute 
Constancy in hazard of Ibsing a place at the table, had for 
a moment withdrawn the homage of her worshippers. She 
had abdicated her throne without a syllable of complaint; 
and whether she sank into the earth to renew her fascina¬ 
tions in the wizard cave from which they must have come, 
or ascended to the clouds that now lay in reposing pomp 
like a pillow for the moon, none saw, knew, or could con¬ 
jecture to what part of creation she was gone. 

V*. hen the supper precedency was settled, and the heart 
had room to come in to play once more, the universal ques¬ 
tion was for the universal enchantress. What sylph ena¬ 
moured of her dancing, or pacha in disguise, or whiskered 
prince of the empire had carried her off, was asked in the 
same voice of dismay by the men, and with the same not 
undelighted smile by the women. 

The majority of the lovers, in despair, betook them¬ 
selves to the remedy that never fails, from arctic to ant¬ 
arctic. Passion, like thirst, has but one palliative, and to 
that the boyars fled for refuge by instinct. Hock, cham- 
bertin, and tokay are three allies made to defy the three 
grand evils of life ; and happy the man who has them 
against debt, love, and curtain-lectures. 

Cantacuzene, engaged in the prince’s private party, was 








HEBE. 


m 


among the last to hear the inquiry ; but when he heard it, 
bis alarm was not to be controuled. The strange and 
rapid alterations of Hebe’s manner during the day had 
struck him with anxiety and surprise. But he had too high 
a reliance on her lofty feelings to doubt that, when the due 
time was come,' he should find her mystery one of a heart 
full of truth and honour. 

Hastily apologizing to the prince, and without commu¬ 
nicating his suspicions, he rushed into the gardens. They 
were extensive, and he wandered long in vain. 

Yet, one thought, too painful to be borne, smote him. 
He had observed the fiery indignation that spoke in every 
feature of his son at the refusal of Hebe, and murmurs of 
mingled scorn and revenge had reached his ear, though 
they were instantiv suppressed and turned off with a smile. 
He knew the haughty nature of the youth, long pampered 
by the habits of Constantinople and the arrogance of com¬ 
mand, and he trembled at the furious excesses of pride in¬ 
flamed by passion. 

The suspicion grew stronger as he thought of his hur¬ 
ried departure from the court a few days before, almost 
without a pretext and his stern and contemptuous lqok, 
as he turned on his heel from Hebe’s entreaty to be recon¬ 
ciled. Had this boy of burning blood and vexed pride 
borne away his child ? 

Harassed bv thoughts to which he dared give no utter¬ 
ance, the boyar was forcing his weary way through the 
overgrown paths of the wood, when he heard voices near 
him. They spoke in whispers, but his ear caught the 
broken words. 

“ I dare advise nothing ; I ask and hope for nothing. 
The Bohemian, wherever she has learned it, has uniformly 
told the truth. I am indifferent about life, but while 1 live 
I must think of you. The time for decision is come. 
By this time to-morrow vve may both he secure and happy, 
or may both be undone ; 1 in my grave, for l will not sur¬ 
vive your loss, and you in the hands of a being of uncon- 
trouled violence, arid determined to be your lord, if you 
scorn him as your husband; a Turk with the name of 
Christian, a young pacha, who knows no limit of his pas¬ 
sions but his power.” 


* t 




m 


THE WALLACHIAN’s TALE, 


Deep sobs were the only answer. 

u One word for all,” pronounced the voice again ; “ wifi 
you be the wife, the beloved, honoured, treasured wife of 
Justiniani, or the slave, the abject, imprisoned, despised—* 
how can l pronounce the word—paramour of Constan¬ 
tine ? for, in revenge for your rejection of him, this he has 
sworn you shall be.” 

The secret was now disclosed that solved the long mys- 
tery of Hebe’s joys and sorrows. Theodore Justiniani was 
the son of an Italian officer, who, after serving in Cantacu- 
zene’s regiment, had retired with him, and settled on a 
small estate under his friend Hebe, accustomed to see 
him joined in her sports and studies from infancy, had 
givep to Theodore the affections of her young heart; and 
if the deepest homage in return could have deserved that 
most precious possession, the heart of woman in its fond¬ 
ness, purity, and faith, it was deserved by her friend. The 
young Greek’s first sorrow had been when she heard that 
she was to leave the hills and valleys, every spot of which 
was consecrated to her glowing fancy by the image of 
Theodore. But her sorrow was suddenly turned into de¬ 
light by the news that he was appointed by the boyar cap¬ 
tain of his escort to Bucharest. 

From that time a strange and mysterious influence 
guided them. 

In the country, the boyar’s vigorous and active life gave 
him little leisure for the observation of two beings, whom 
he looked upon as only twp children. At the court, occu¬ 
pied by the perplexing labours of a new cabinet, balancing 
between the rival terrors and temptations of the Musco¬ 
vite and the i )ttornan, he had still less leisure to watch the 
growth of childish attachment into youthful passion. But 
the story was now told, and he felt, with a pang, how idle 
are the plans of philosophy against the force of nature. 

He stayed to hear no more, but indignantly stood in the 
presence of the lovers. Hebe uttered a cry, and fell at his 
feet. u As for you, traitor,” he exclaimed to Theodore, 
u 1 shall find a time and a punishment. Meet me on this 
spot half an hour hence, if, after having had the baseness 
to teach disobedience to this weak girl, you have the 
courage to face a man of honour,” 











HEBE. 


m 

Justiniani, with a smitten heart and burning cheek, 
heard his sentence ; he bowed without a word, and turned 
away. But he was detained ; the irresistible force of two 
arms, white and delicate as two wreaths of lilies, stopped 
him ; and Hebe, with a countenance of native nobleness 
and virtue, commanded that he should explain their story. 
But his spirit had been roused, and for once he disobeyed. 
The task then devolved upon herself. 

44 1 had no secret from my father and my lord,’’ said she, 
turning to the boyar. u I was ignorant how any one hu¬ 
man being could make me more happy or unhappy than 
another, until 1 was taught it by your son. His proposal 
of marriage opened my eyes to the feelings which I am 
now proud to avow, for they are bestowed on one worthy 
of them. This is no time, my lord, for concealment, f 
found that to love Constantine was as impossible—as it 
was to forget Theodore/’ 

The confession was made ; and she wept with agitation 
and the overflowings of her generous soul. Then more 
firmly resumed— t '* But, my lord will believe his child, when 
she tells him that she had determined to suppress every 
wish unsanctioned by his authority. Theodore knows 
that I repelled his friendship, and that I avoided his pre¬ 
sence, as by my entreaty he avoided mine. But we were 
at last urged by something like a superior power; we 
were even compelled 10 hazard my lord’s displeasure. 
Letters, of which l could not conjecture the writer, con¬ 
tinually reached me, detailing evil intentions on the part 
of powerful nobles here. 1 had reason from accidental 
circumstances, to believe that the information was true. 
But to whom was I to fly in my terrors ? 1 knew that to 

Gommunieate those name? to my lord would be to involve 
him in ill blood with profligate and dangerous men of rank, 
who, if they dared not openly defy him, would accomplish 
their revenge by poison and the dagger. There was but 
one friend to whom [ dared to mention those bitter trials 5 
and I found him what I expected. 

44 Let me do justice to you, Theodore.*’ She with a 
blush took his hand. 44 1 found new sources of regard in 
the ready zeal with which you bafiied those criminals and 
conspirators against a woman ; but I was still more grate- 

n* 


126 THE WALLA CHIAN'S TALE. 

ful for the prudence that accomplished my safety without 
bringing my lord and father into public hostility with beings' 
unworthy of a thought from one like him.” 

Cantacuzene would have as soon doubted an angel from 
heaven, as the rosy lips that spoke those words. He 
caught her to his heart. “Yet,” said he pausing, “ did I 
not hear more than this ? was there not an offer of mar¬ 
riage ? and could my Hebe’s sense of duty listen to this 
without her father’s knowledge ?” 

“ There let me speak,” interposed Theodore. “ I now 
stand before you, my lord, for the last time ; for you have 
pronounced my sentence of banishment. Reserve is now 
idle. I loved Hebe; l shall love her to the-last hour of 
my obscure life. Yet I would rather have perished in 
hopeless passion than have urged her to the rash step of 
following my fortunes, and offending her more than father. 
But I was in alarm, almost in despair. 1 had received in¬ 
telligence the most unquestionable, that on this very night 
Hebe was to be carried off, and either compelled to a most 
unhappy marriage, or sunk into the last degradation of 
woman.” 

The boyar’s indignation was roused, and he demanded 
full knowledge of the insult. “Had she remained in 
Bucharest,” said Theodore, “ my lord’s palace was to have 
been surrounded, and Hebe would have been by this time 
in the hands of worse than banditti. A troop of the Alba¬ 
nian cavalry were actually under orders. J implored her 
permission to disclose this new danger to you ; but she - 
refused it, not merely as before, through dread of exposing 
iny lord to the mairce of licentious slaves and poltrons, 
against whom no man can guard ;—she now dreaded the 
infliction of a pang on a father’s heart, an agony to which 
all peril would have been trivial.” 

The boyar felt the pang through every nerve. He had 
anticipated the name. Constantine was on his lips; but 
be mastered his emotion, and cordially held out his hand 
to Theodore. 

4 And so, when you found her in danger on the one 
.-side, and determined not to apply to the only protection 
on the other that could have been of use to her, you offered 
ber your own. It was a rash act, young soldier; but 




HEBE > 


127 


youth will be absurd; and”—he smiled as he spoke— 
“ woman, until she learns to wear a mask for life, will be 
perplexing the peace of the world. I forgive you.” 

They walked from the arbour in silence, till they were 
roused by the distant lights and sounds of the fete. The 
boyar had shaken off his dejection. 

“ And now, Hebe,” said he, as he placed her arm 
within his, to enter the saloon, u are you not shocked at 
finding that the romance is at an end, that rivals are to 
pursue you no more, nor fathers to overhear you in forests 
by moon-light ? Or do you not feel yourself pledged 
from this instant forth to hate, scorn, and abjure the 
adorer who was fool enough to let you see that you may 
set your foot on his neck, if such be your sovereign will 
and pleasure ?” 

Hebe in smiles and tears of delight kissed his hands. 
He raised her up, and with a paternal blessing placed her 
in her lover’s arms. 

There are moments in which the joy of a whole life 
seems concentrated ; deep, silent secrets, and delights of 
the inmost soul, when a word would be profanation, and 
the single language is that of the beatings of the over¬ 
charged heart. Such were the moments that had now fol¬ 
lowed the terrors of parting, and the bitterness of hopelss 
passion. 

The boyar, scarcely less happy in their happiness, suf¬ 
fered them to enjoy the first sacred communion of hearts 
that were now to be bound for ever. By one impulse they 
turned their countenances glowing with love, hope, and 
gratitude, to the heavens, and in tears and sighs of richer 
joy tharf smiles ever told, pledged their faith through good 
and ill, through sickness and sorrow, through life and the 
grave. 

u Now,” said the boyar, “ to avoid the curiosity of the 
wise people about us, Hebe and I must return to the table ; 
and as this business must not be made public without 
some degree of ceremony, Theodore will ride back to the 
city, and learn patience till to-morrow, or till his truant 
decide whether she can actually make up her mind to sur* 
render pachas and princes for a simple subaltern of ca¬ 
valry.” 





THE WALLACIHAN’s TALE. 


tU 


CHAPTER VII. 


Heee's return to the ball was received with acclama¬ 
tions. She looked more brilliant than ever. Secure hap¬ 
piness gave richer lustre to her eyes, and more touching 
melody to her voice. Her promenade was conceived to 
be the source of this striking change, and many a languid 
princess lamented that she had not gone to cheer her roses 
by the breeze. The Hospodar again sinned against eti¬ 
quette, and honoured her with exclusive approval; the 
foreign chevaliers abandoned their addresses to the opulent, 
and the boyars half abandoned the bottle. But in the 
midst of the general rapture, morning, unwelcome morn¬ 
ing, broke in, and the fete was put to flight before the 
sunbeams, as if a brigade of Turkish horse had been let 
loose upon it. The loveliest of the lovely instinctively 
buried their faces in their shawls, and scattered in dismay. 


The road homewards was-instantly covered with harassed 
horses and indescribable equipages rushing and rolling 
against each other, to the infinite hazard of their freight 
of noble lives. And it was not until the loveliest of the 
lovely had reached their chambers, closed their shutters, 
and given a consoling look in their mirrors by candle-light 
again, that they dared go to bed, and trust themselves 
with a dream. 

But the young Greek had no thought of her own attrac 
lions. Sleep was impossible; she would not even suffer 
the streams of delicious thought to be checked by slumber. 
She fondly cherished every image of the hour that was to 
her the supreme of life. She revolved every word, every 
look. She wept with delight, as an expanding flower 
drops its dew. She wandered into deep and remote 
thoughts of the future, and saw it to the last smooth and 
radiant: life like the boundless level of ocean coloured 
with the rosiest hues of heaven. Slumber at length 
sealed the happiest eyes of earth, only to repeat the 
vision in more fantastic beauty. 















HEBE. 


129 


A confusion of sounds in the palace roused her late in 
the day. She instantly felt that unaccountable sensation 
that so often warns us of misfortune, and hastened to the 
apartments of Cantacuzene. He was gone ; and Hebe 
could learn no more than that, oy some intelligence which 
he had received about noon, he had rode out, ordering 
his escort to follow. 

The arrival of a messenger from thq boyar to mention 
that he would not be at home during the day, had pro¬ 
duced the confusion among the domestics, among whom 
rumours of public danger were already spreading. Squad¬ 
rons of Austrian hulans had been seen gathering on the 
Transylvanian frontier. A regiment of spahis, on the 
other hand, were collecting contributions along the left 
bank of the Danube ; and the slightest symptoms of war 
were sufficient to excite the terror of a country perpetually 
the victim, whoever might be aggressor. 

But where was her affianced husband ? She passed the 
dreary hours of that day lingering for his step; she 
oaught the sound of his horse’s tramp in every echo. 

To what ill fortune, inconstancy, or calamity, was his 
singular absence to be attributed ? 

Her quick fancy augured some great reverse. She saw 
the night fall ; and, sitting at the same casement from 
which she had seen the sun rise, asked, in the vehemence 
of her fevered heart, what she had done to be thus sud¬ 
denly cast down from the height of happiness. 

The night was inclement; yet she sat out the storm. 
She watched without a fear the long shafts and spikes of 
lightning as they tore through the masses of cloud, and 
wildly wished that some flash would lay her perplexities 
at rest for ever. 

But at midnight her quick eye observed a blaze rising 
some miles off aiong the ridge that overtops the city. 
She felt a consciousness that her fate was connected with 
its coming. The light slowly approached, and as it ex¬ 
panded, she could perceive that it was from a number of 
torches carried by cavalry. 

Her heart, alternately swelled and died away. She felt 
as powerless as an infant, while she watched the troop 
making the slow circuit of the fortifications. The light 


130 


THE WALIACHIAN’s ?AIE, 


disappeared, flashed again, rose,and died, until she saw it 
entering the gates ; and the sound of many voices in the 
palace at length told her that the boyar was come. 

In fear and hope she advanced to meet him ; but she had 
no strength to ask the one question on which her all but 
life hung. She could only see that dejection sat on his 
manly physiognomy. 

The hall was crowded with attendants and the dis¬ 
mounted troopers of the escort. It was no place for the 
disclosure which the boyar had to make, and he led the 
shuddering girl back toiler apartment, where, with a voice 
that, betrayed his own want of composure, he explained 
the purpose of his journey. 

The ways of Providence are wise, my child,” said 
the noble philosopher with a sigh, k ' and it is perhaps their 
very wisdom that -o often makes them strange to us. 
Our faculties are not made to question those deep and far- 
reaching views to which, though they provide for us better 
than we could desire for ourselves, human intelligence is 
but. folly. Last night I had looked upon your happiness, my 
Hebe, as almost secure beyond this world’s changes ; and 
so it may be still ; hut the means must be in higher bands 
than ours. The alliance with Justiniam must, I fear, be 
delayed.” 

“ But he lives ! tell me that he lives !” exclaimed Hebe, 
sinking on her knees before him, and with her clasped 
hands beseeching him to pronounce the words of mercy. 
“ In the name of that Heaven which we worship, but tell 
me that he lives.” 

The boyar could not abide the agony of that face of 
beauty, every quivering feature of which was distinctly 
seen by the strong illumination of the burning vase above. 
He silently attempted to rise ; but she read evil in his 
silence; and fixing upon him eyes that seemed to dart 
into his soul, with one hand buried in the giossv tresses on 
her forehead, to check its throbbings, and give her time 
to breathe, and with the other grasping his robe, she 
waited for her sentence of misery 

u There is hope yet,” gravely said the boyar. “ Theo¬ 
dore's absence this morning surprised me ; but I took it 
for granted that it was but some of the little piques of the 


HEBE. 


131 


young, and not the less likely to be atoned for, on his arrival, 
for which I naturally looked every hour. But new intelli¬ 
gence of the movement of troops on the frontier alarmed 
me. I knew the indiscriminate pride of rapine among the 
roving squadrons on both sides, allies and enemies alike 
and my impression gradually began to be that Theodore, 
m the venturous desire to show himself worthy of my 
connection, had made some rash reconnoissance , and had 
fallen into their hands. 

“ I immediately despatched hussars to the frontier, and 
have given up the day to a search in every direction in 
which it was probable that he had gone. I have returned, 
as you see, without success ; but, my child, if this cost 
you some tears, remember that the anguish of to-day may 
be turned into the gladness of to-morrow ; and more than 
all, that we are in the hands of a Being whose final object 
is to make all his creatures happy, if they will not repel 
his benevolence by unrepentant error, or self-indulgent 
and mistrustful sorrow.” 

The mourner rose. The tears still would gush ; but 
higher feelings made them calm ; and she thought of 
hopes before which the reverses of life are mists before the 
sun. She withdrew to her chamber, and there in solitude 
sought on her knees that peace of heart which is nowhere 
else to be found. 

The troubles of a wavering cabinet and a disturbed 
country, day by day still more occupied Cantacuzene’s 
time. But the search for Theodore was unrernitted and 
fruitless. Months passed in alternate hope and disappoint¬ 
ment. Hebe shunned society, but her powerful under¬ 
standing showed her the idleness of intemperate grief. 

She wept and prayed, and was patient. Theodore was 
in all her thoughts ; but she had giver* up the hope of ever 
seeing him again. He was to her a* the image of the 
dead ; a being of memory that excluded all others from 
her love. Her passion was profound and melancholy, but 
sacred ; less for one still struggling through the trials of 
life, than for one of the freed and lofty dwellers in a world 
where human suffering can intrude no more. 

Woman may be a fickle thing ; but it is where the cap¬ 
tivation is of her fancy, not of her heart. W here she has 






132 


THE WALLACE!Aft’s TALE. 


formed the image in the play and wandering of her fine 
sensibilities, the same spell which called up the vision can 
lay it at its will; as the same breeze which shapes the 
cloud into fantastic beauty, can sweep it away into nothing¬ 
ness. All teat is of gay caprice perishes, and is made to 
perish. It builds the bower, and rears the altar, and groves 
weary of both ; the course of nature does the rest—strips 
the bower of its blossoms, and melts away the altar. But 
woman is capable of an infinitely more profound, solemn, 
and enduring quality—true passion. Instead of being the 
birth of the sportive and frivolous, it belongs wholly to the 
more pow/erfui minds. It is no factitious fire, sparkling 
and playing before the eye, to pas9 away in the glitter of 
the hour ; but an intense, deep-seated, and inextinguisha¬ 
ble principle, which, as wisdom or weakness guides, may 
be the source of all that is noble and vigorous in the hu¬ 
man character, or the instrument of utter ruin ; a moral 
volcano, whose fire may be the hidden fount of luxuriance 
and beauty to all upon the surface, or may display its wild 
strength in consuming and turning it into barrenness for 
ever. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

At length some knowledge of the mysterious fate of 
Theodore seemed likely to transpire. One night as the 
boyar was returning late from the Hospodar’s council, a 
billet was flung into his carnage. The streets of Bucha¬ 
rest are proverbially as dark as dungeons, and it was im¬ 
possible to see from what hand the billet came. But it$ 
contents were calculated to excite curiosity. 

“ If you wish to hear the fate of Theodore Justiniani, 
come to-morrow night at twelve to the southern gate of 
the city. If you suspect treachery, bring as many attend¬ 
ants as you please. But their presence will restrict the 
disclosure. If you would know all, you will come alone.” 




ItEBE. 


136 


The boyar felt no ground for suspicion of any private 
Hostility to himself. I n a city crowded with troops and pop¬ 
ulation there could be no foreign fear ; and he determined 
to go alone. He could scarcely doubt that Theodore’s 
absence proceeded from some singular misfortune. Long 
attachment had bound him to the name of Justiniani, and 
Ilebe’s deep dejection was worth even serious hazard to 
remove. 

He put his pistols in his pocket, and, as the'great clock 
of the cathedral tolled twelve, he was at the place of ren¬ 
dezvous. 

The night was one of those changeful periods of autumn 
when the most perfect serenity is suddenly turned into the 
utter rage of the elements. The populace were long 
since in their beds. The occasional equipages returning 
from the parties of the nobles flew along to escape the 
storm ; and soon, except for the passing of some houseless , 
wretch or midnight plunderer, startled by the storm, and 
flying for shelter, he might have thought himself in a city 
of the dead. 

He lingered under the ramparts until his patience was 
exhausted, and he had begun to conceive that some idle 
jest had been played upon his fcredulity. The cathedral 
chimes were ringing one; when, just as he bad determined 
to be trifled with no more, and was wrapping his cloak 
round him to go forth and brave the storm of wind and 
rain, which now rushed down with wilder violence, he 
heard a step close at his side. The darkness Was exces¬ 
sive. He demanded who was there. Receiving no an¬ 
swer, and thinking that he might have been deluded to 
that lonely spot for the purpose of robbery, or private re¬ 
venge, he drew his sabre, and made a blow in the direc¬ 
tion of the sound. 

A voice that seemed to come from under his feet, utter 
ed, “Strike your enemies, but the time is not come; but 
assist your friends, for the time is come.” 

Total silence followed. No further answer could be 
obtained to the boyar’s repeated demands that the speaker 
should appear, or dismiss him at once. At length, decla 
• ing that he would be sported with no more, he rnoveo 
from his place of shelter, and had gone forward some 
Vox,. L— If 





134 the wallaohIan’s tale. 

steps into the open space that lies between the foot of the 
rampart and the streets, when his eyes were caught by the 
' extraordinary appearance of a large globe of yellow light, 
floating along the pinnacles of the cathedral. 

Singular as the phenomenon was, he was at first inclined 
to resolve it into some of the meteors formed by the highly 
electric state of the atmosphere ; but as he gazed, the globe 
changed its form, and lengthened out into the human 
figure. A gigantic spectre stood on the battlements, now 
pointing to the earth, now to the heaven, and exhibiting a 
face strongly marked with solemnity and wo. The time, 
the loneliness, and the business on which Cantacuzene had 
come, heightened the natural influence of this strange 
visitant. * • 

Fear he felt none ; but a deep interest and anxiety to 
know the object of the visitant were excited. iNo man 
had laboured more to suppress superstition among his 
peasantry; and the tales of vampyres, amulets, and evil eyes 
had found in him a resolute castigator With the usual zeal 
of a reformer, he had started perhaps beyond the legitimate 
boundary, and even offered a reward to the man who 
would produce to him an authentic proof that there was 
any ground whatever for these mysteries, stronger than 
the absurdity worked by wine, fear, or dreams. 

The memory of this determination not to believe, flashed 
on bis mind with something of the feeling of a crime, as 
he saw the shape glare on him from its stand on the brow 
of the great place of graves. Still, though his heart beat 
with sensations that in another hour he would have chid¬ 
den as weakness, the philosopher in his nature gave him 
strength ; and, if he dreaded, he longed for the nearer ap¬ 
proach of the phantom, from which, if it were any thing 
more than a vapour of the night, he might, at length know 
the great mystery, and hear tidings of the forbidden world. 

His wish was soon, though but partially, granted. The 
phantom descended from the pinnacle, an enormous 
height: but what was difficulty or descent to such pow¬ 
ers? It walked along the steep edge of the roof, where 
no living foot could have found a resting-place for a mo¬ 
ment. It came still lower down, and stood, making ges¬ 
tures of the most impressive solemnity, on a spot where 


HEBE. 


135 


all looked a sheet of perpendicular and polished marble. 
Passing down this almost precipice, every vein and colour* 
ing of which shone in the glimmering radiance of the 
spectre, it at last touched the ground. 

B ut the massive iron-work of the gates was still between. 
A voice demanded whether the boyar was prepared to fol¬ 
low where it would lead. His answer was firm. More 
than the gratification of curiosity urged him to investigate 
the wonder to its depths. He was still unpersuaded ; yet 
what he saw was more then strange enough to stimulate 
inquiry. Let what would come of the pursuit, he was 
convinced that the fate of Theodore would receive some 
elucidation. If the whole display were illusive, it was yet 
evident that it must have been constructed on some know¬ 
ledge of a transaction which to him had remained in total 
obscurity But if the shape before him were true, and the 
permission to warn and instruct had been given ; if his 
philosophy taught him that it was not unsuitable to reason 
that the Providence to whom the blood cries out of the 
ground should take especial means for the discovery of 
the crime, how should he be justified in shrinking from its 
full disclosure ? 

As if the apparition knew his thoughts, it moved for¬ 
ward. No gates of iron, none of adamant, could have 
retarded its progress. It passed free as air through the 
massive bars. Once on his side of the portal, it strode 
loftily along to the fortifications. The solid rampart, 
which, the moment before, had seemed impervious as a 
rock, gave way to its tread. The boyar boldly followed ; 
passed through the rampart unimpeded, and when he 
glanced upwards again, saw the stars twinkling over his 
head, and the huge mass of the battlements and bastions 
frowning behind him. 

A single ravelin was still to be passed ; but as he was 
ascending it, guided by the blue effulgence that flowed 
from the robes of the vision, a dismounted cannon, that 
lay under the embrasures, struck his foot, and even while 
he glanced down to discover the nature of the obstacle, 
the guide had disappeared. 

He gazed round the horizon in vain. The eye com¬ 
manded leagues upon leagues ; but not even the glimmer 


1.36 THE WALLACHIAIf’s TALE. 

of a cottage light was visible. The heavens were loadea 
with mountains of cloud that, from time to time, like float¬ 
ing JEtnas, threw out broad columns of flame, or opened 
their huge sides, as if the imprisoned fire had burst them. 
The storm was returning in its violence ; the sudden gusts 
of wind compelled the boyar to grasp the gun, lest he 
should be swept away ; and the fragments of the ruinous 
outworka flying about him began to render his situation 
one of great personal hazard. 

To remain where he was, or to return, was equally diffi ¬ 
cult. He was now convinced that rio personal object 
could have been designed in leading him to this desolate 
scene. Exhaustion of body acted on even his powerful 
understanding ; and while be heard the roar of the whirl¬ 
wind, the heaving of the forests like a distant ocean, and 
the awful peals of the thunder, he could scarcely restrain 
himself from the thought that in this wild visitation there 
was some reference to the punishment of his own incre¬ 
dulity ; that the storm was suffered to shake and over¬ 
whelm him, but that the mysterious knowledge, the price 
for which it was braved, tvas to be withheld. 

He had scarcely conceived the thought, before the 
voice was again at his side. No shape was visible ; but 
a feeble glimpse of light glanced along the path which he 
was commanded to follow. He followed unhesitatingly . 
The path led over an intricate space of ruins and weeds 
to a broken portcullis. The bars rose spontaneously be¬ 
fore them. A door rolled back, the vision passed on, and 
the boyar intrepidly entered. 

The light perished and the door closeckat the same mo¬ 
ment. He felt his way with his hands. He was evidently 
io one of the dungeons of the rampart ; and human fears 
struck him again. But he was strong in the sense of duty, 
and he gathered his vigour for the result. 

He was not left to long perplexity. The ground under 
his feet heaved, and he felt himself sinking. 

The boyar was now suddenly convinced that his death 
was intended : and the natural love of life struggled 
against the horrible chances of this living grave. He cried 
out. in the hope that some sentinel might catch the sound ; 
be grasped at the invisible walls, but there was nothing or. 


itEBE. 


137 


m cb ne could fix Ins grasp. Still he went down. He 

hiV G n r F T thlcker ’ and more Pestilent. A vapour, 
that smelled of contagion, rose round him. He was now 

more than ever convinced that some atrocious treachery 
Had been practised upon him, and that he was to be a 
cnhce. But the thought, which would have unnerved 
a feebler mind, restored his to its dignity. High principle 
and vigorous intellect wore still his. If fate was against 
him, he must yield ; if personal enemies had circumvented 
him, he determined that, let the worst come, they should 
have no triumph—that he would not degrade his honour- 
able career by pusillanimous concessions in its last hour. 

While he was awaiting his sentence, with the full con¬ 
sciousness that now neither courage nor sagacity could 
avail, further than to prolong his torture, the cell heo-an to 
be seen more distinctly round him. But the light was 
so pale, that his first impression attributed it to merely the 
common strengthening: of the sight by being accustomed 
to darkness I he light however increased, and he gradu- 
ahy saw a strange and shadowy figure at the extremity of 
the vault sitting beside an open grave. 

Greatly perturbed at all that he had witnessed during this 
night of peril, Cantacuzene at first would have retreated 
from a phenomenon whose half-defined shape struck him 
with more anxiety than he perhaps would have felt from 
any distinct form of terror. But by a strong effort he 
advanced,demanding “ for what purpose he had been be¬ 
guiled into that place of hideousness and horror.” The 
voice that had so long led him on, oracularly answered, 
as if from the earth above his head, that “ for the bold', 
there was no danger ; for the believing, there was no con¬ 
cealment 

The figure then rose to a height which filled the vault, 
and in a splendour which made the boyar cast his eyes on 
the ground to escape its intensity. The voice again was 
heard, demanding whether he was prepared to receive 
“ knowledge at the price of pain.” 

The boyar haughtily exclaimed, that “ he was to be 
irifi d with, no longer ; that he came for knowledge, and 
that he was prepared to pay its price ; that if imposture 
vere intended, he was prepared to detect it; and that if he 

12 * 

% ■ N 







138 


THE WALLACIIIAN’s TALE, 


had been betrayed into evil hands, his fate would be terri¬ 
bly avenged.” 

Loud laughter echoed through the cavern as he pro- 
nounced the threat; the wall before him gave way : 
and, as if he had been let into the open air, he saw by the 
flashes of a storm a vast extent of the landscape round the 
city. Liberty was his instant impulse, and he sprang for¬ 
wards ; but a low barrier, which he had not hitherto 
perceived, stood across the centre of the vault, and the 
lightning showed him on the other side an impassable 
trench. 

He now stood still and gazed. As the light increased, 
the storm passed away, and with it the landscape ; and 
his heart beat high, when, under the softness of the dawn, 
he saw his own Carpathian domains expanded in their 
full fertility. He thought of the unprotected state of his 
adopted child, and wished from his soul that he had never 
brought her from the solitude which could be left by a be¬ 
ing of her beauty and feeling, only to encounter peril. 

The thought had not reached his lips ; yet, at the in¬ 
stant, he saw a magnificent chamber, and in it, in the 
midst of the emblems and employments of her tasteful 
mind, the form of Hebe. She was evidently in deep sor¬ 
row; her face was upturned’to heaven, and the tears that 
streamed down it, and the sighs that heaved her bosom, 
pained him with their reality. He gazed keenly, to dis¬ 
cover whether all this was not illusion. 

But Hebe rose, and after pacing the chamber for a few 
moments, and pressing the tears from her silken eyelashes, 
took up a lute, and touched it to a native air, every note 
of which vibrated to his heart. She sang, and he recog¬ 
nised the unrivalled sweetness of her voice. The words 
were melancholy, and such as he had often known the 
effusion of her feelings. They told of love withered in the 
bud ; of the heart like a sealed fountain, destined to waste 
away ; of hopes buried in the sepulchre of him to whom 
she had pledged her faith once and for ever. He heard 
his own name mingle fondly with the tribute to the me¬ 
mory of Theodore. Her lamentation was now for the 
boyar. She recounted his virtues, his dignity of mind, 
his noble union of the loftiest purposes with tiie gentles" 










HEBE. 


135 


heart,; until, overpowered by the contrast of her earlier 
happiness with the loss of the only two beings who made 
life dear to her, the young Greek let the lute fail from her 
hand, and sank upon the ground. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Cantacuzene, absolutely overcome by the strong re¬ 
semblance, would have rushed forward to her help, but 
the obstacle before his steps recalled him to bitter con¬ 
sciousness and to incredulity. 

“ If,” he exclaimed, “ there be a human being within 
hearing, who dreads punishment, or looks to reward, let 
him come forward and trust to me. He shall be re¬ 
warded to the full extent of his demands. If this be some 
conspiracy to extort money, money he shall have. But 
another moment’s delay in accepting those terms will be 
fatal to every man concerned in this tissue of oharlatanry. 
and crime.” 

A burst of clamorous mockery again echoed through 
the cavern. “ Boyar Cantacuzene,” said the mysterious 
voice. “ charge not the keepers of the secret world with 
the follies of your world of guilt and ignorance. As the 
infant is to the man, so are the men of your boasted wis¬ 
dom to the pupils of the true philosophy ; but as the stars 
are above the earth, so high above all that is born of earth 
are the spirits of our mysteries. Now look, listen, and if 
you would not be undone doubt no more.” 

He looked ; before him was a small chamber of the* 
most simple kind. A stove, a few books and papers scat¬ 
tered on shelves, a few paintings of men in ancient armour, 
a few plaster busts of Roman patriots and philosophers, 
and two or three large charts hung upon the walls, made 
its whole furniture. At a table sat a figure of a man, with 
his head bent close over a map, which he was traversing 
with a pair of compasses. On the floor were a small 
trunk, a cloak, a telescope, and some other common pre 
parations for a journey. 



140 


THE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


The boyar gazed in utter astonishment. It was in a 
chamber exactly like this, in the Leopoldstat of Vienna, 
that he had parted with his glorious friend Rhiga. The 
evening of their fatal parting, the last time that he was to 
meet in this world one of the noblest hearts that ever left it, 
was indelibly impressed on his mind. Every feature of 
the apartment had been retraced by him in his solitude, 
until he had the picture as firmly before his thoughts as if 
he*once more stood within its walls. The chamber pre¬ 
sent to him now was perfect identity. 

Yet he paused. He had heard of the celebrated illu¬ 
sions of Schaefer at Leipsic, and knew the power of the 
imagination to realize its own dreams.* The disciples of 
Weishaupt, a more dexterous charlatan for a more atro¬ 
cious purpose, had ventured even under the claws of the im¬ 
perial eagle ; and the proud nobles of the Austrian aristoc¬ 
racy had been duped into worshipping the absurdities of 
magnetism and the cabbala. But while the deists and 
philosophers of the very pious and profligate Vienna 
bowed down their solemn foreheads in the dust in worship 
of the ^ new science,” Cantacuzene’9 clear understanding, 
undarkened by the superstitious fears that make vice blind, 
had scorned to share the common folly. The ingenuity 
of Weishaupt’s most striking illusion was broken up Vy 
his penetration ; and the public penalties, by which tlio 
whole system of jugglery w^as prohibited, owed their ori¬ 
gin in no slight degree to his sagacity in its public ex, 
posure.- 

But here was no trace of that imperfect performance 
which had enabled him to detect the Viennese impostures. 
The delusion, if such, was incomparably exact, minute, 
and probable. One test more would be all that scepti¬ 
cism could demand. “ Let him hear the words of his 
departed friend.” 

As he pronounced the wish, the sitter at the table, 
raised his head, and fixed on him the large dark eye for- 
which the countenance of Rhiga was remarkable even 
among his countrymen. 

Cantacuzene uttered an involuntary cry of recognition 
and wonder. Every trait of the patriot lived before him. 
He saw the handsome and lofty physiognomy, pale as it 


SiEBE. 


141 . 


was with thought, and worn with long labour in the most 
glorious and unhappy cause that ever stirred the spirit of 
mankind. He saw the brown hair touched into streaks 
of early white, and the magnificent forehead that had so 
strikingly proclaimed the hero and the bard. The lips 
moved at last; and he heard these memorable words :— 

u Let what will become of me ;—this 1 would say to 
kings and people:— 

“ The cause of Greece is not the cause of rebellion 
against lawful government, nor of an insane passion to 
throw otf all authority. It is a rising against misery too 
great to be borne ; an effort of nature against a degree of 
wretchedness that God never intended to be borne by man. 
We demand not some extravagant shape of freedom, but 
the simplest one ihat will secure us from being ground to 
the dust, trampled, and murdered at the will of baroa- 
rians that know no fear of God or man ;—that will save us 
from the daily agony of seeing our wives and children 
dragged away for the hideous purposes of savage passions, 
and ourselves rewarded lor our wretched submission by 
the whip and the scimitar ; our religion insulted ; our 
national character a byeword ; our property the prey of 
insolent and capricious plunder ; our country one vast 
extent of sorrow and shame, licentious as a haram, dark 
as a dungeon, and bloody as a perpetual scaffold. 

The speaker drooped his head on his hands, and was 
silent for a time. Cantacuzene was overwhelmed with 
astonishment. 

“ No,” said the illustrious Greek, starting from his seat, 
with a gesture such as Pericles might have used when, in 
the sig ht of Athens, he obtested the shades of the warriors 
fallen in the cause of their country. 

“ No, those things must have an end. Human nature 
cries out against those horrors. When the powers of 
Europe shall have learned to throw aside that feeble, short- 
sighted, and unholy policy, which dreads to do an act of 
common justice, through fear that it may be a means 
of some petty good to a rival ; when statesmen shall have 
felt that there is a mighty Being above, who loves justice 
and hates the oppressor, who commai ds us to do our duty 
and leave the rest to his wisdom ; then will the robber of. 




THE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


142 

the Caucasus, that a thousand years could not civilize • 
then will the human tiger, that will be a tiger to the last r 
he driven from his prey ; and Greece and the world will 
rejoice together. There is our emblem.” 

The form pointed to the heavens, which exhibited the 
colours of a brilliant sunset “Greece has laboured 
through a day of tempest ; but her hour will come, an 
hour of splendid tranquillity ; when her past sufferings will 
but heighten her future peace, and, like those clouds, the 
very sources of her storm, will brighten and uniold them¬ 
selves into the sources of her glory.” 

The boyar listened as to the language of more than man. 
Those were the actual words that had passed on the final 
night of his meeting with Rhiga. That they could have 
transpired, was impossible to conceive. They were spoken 
in the little chamber, where he alone was present. He 
had even made no memorandum of them, so reluctant 
was he to offend the jealousy of the court in whose army 
he served. He had never disclosed them to man ; and 
yet here they were detailed to him syllable for syllable. 

When he looked up again, the chamber had disappeared, 
A low underwood, thinly scattered with trees, spread along 
the bank of a mighty stream. Threading the broken 
paths of the wood, a horseman was riding slowly along,, 
and making signals to a smad barge that was nearing th& 
bank. The horseman, on (he point of embarking, turned 
round and waved his hand with an air of proud dejection- 
to the land. He was Rhiga ! 

This anticipation of the boyar’s thoughts completed the 
wonder. He had been on the point of demanding to- 
know how his gallant friend was snatched away from his 
career of fame and virtue ; bui now he w-atched the deve- 
lopement with breathless and fearful interest. 

The horseman embarked. But the barge was rapidly 
pursued and surrounded by others that had evidently been 
lying in wait for it under cover of the shoie. He saw the 
heroic Greek defend himself with desperate gallantry ; he 
saw him overpowered, carried on shore, flung, chained, 
into a wagon, and carried to Belgrade. He saw him 
brought out on the ramparts, the pacha standing at the 
head of his janizaries, and gazing in wonder at the intrepid 







UEBE. 


14& 

being that, with his last look turned on Greece, knelt 
Waiting for the scimitar. He saw the signal given, the 
flash ot the steel, and the death of that man whom reviving 
Greece will yet fix in the temple of immortality between 
Homer and Aliltiades. The boyar uttered an exclamation, 
of agony. 

“ Are you convinced now ?” said the voice ; “ or must 
the knowledge for which you came be hidden from your 
unbelief for ever ?” 

“ I am convinced; let me know all, and know it at 
once,” was the answer. 

Wall and rampart, pacha and victim, dissolved away 
into air, and in their place rose a misty resemblance of a 
grove, with a distant pavilion from which sounds of music 
and dancing were heard. He saw two figures whom he 
rapidly recognised as Theodore and Hebe in deep con¬ 
versation. They parted ; Hebe towards the pavilion, and 
the lover to plunge into the wood, where he remained 
alone, absorbed in the reverie of passion. A stranger 
wrapt in a military cloak suddenly rushed from his con¬ 
cealment beside him. He taunted Theodore wuh treachery 
to his honour, his military subordination, and his master’s 
household. The voice was distinctly heard, and its tone 
struck the boyar as fearfully familiar to him. But the 
speaker’s face was turned away. 

Theodore eagerly deprecated the quarrel, cleared him¬ 
self of the charge of disingenuousness, and offered to leave 
the whole question to the decision of Hebe, or the boyar 
himself. The stranger replied only by throwing off his 
cloak, and drawing his scimitar. Theodore vainly be¬ 
sought his furious antagonist to avoid this rashness, listen 
to reason, and spare him the misery of offending his family. 
The entreaty was answered by a blow. They fought 
long, the stranger ferociously ; but Theodore’s coolness 
baffled every attack, until in the very act of wresting the 
weapon from his assailant, his foot slipped, and the point 
entered his bosom. He dropped on the ground with a 
deep groan. 

It was echoed by Cantacuzene. The stranger, struck 
with sudden horror by the catastrophe, threw himself beside 
(the dying man ; attempted to staunch the wound ; and. 






i'44 the wallachian’s tale. 

finding it hopeless, was in despair. A sound of voices, 
and the glittering of lights through the grove alarmed him ; 
he started up, and fled. As he turned, his countenance 
was for the first time visible in the moonlight. Every 
nerve of the boyar's vigorous frame trembled with anguish. 
The shedder of that blood was his son Constantine ! 

An irresistible conviction of the fact seized him. Some 
vague conjectures, the impressions rather of a dread lest 
it should be so, than of any ground for believing that it 
was, had often beset him. But certainty was now be¬ 
neath his eye, and he felt the blow driven home to his 
own heart. 

' Sinking under the fatal display, he adjured the power 
whatever it might be, gifted to make such dreadful dis¬ 
coveries, to spare his feelings the torture of seeing the 
consummation of the deed of blood. But the develope * 
ment went on. The sounds had passed away ; but no 
foot of the revellers came near the spot; and the body of 
the unfortunate Theodore lay upon the ground, pouring 
forth its purple streams at every heave of the dying frame. 
At length some rude and felon-looking men came lurking 
under the trees ; the rich dress caught their eyes ; they 
surrounded the insensible young soldier, and, dreading 
interruption in their plunder, carried him away. 

Total darkness followed, and the boyar remained ex¬ 
pecting his own assassination to close this night of trial. 
But the gleaming shape that had so long been his guide, 
was again seen as if growing out of the solid earth. It 
stalked onward soundlessly, and without a word. The 
boyar followed. It traversed the caverns, floated along 
the parapet of the bastion, and finally plunged into the 
rampart. Still the boyar, wound up to the last pitch of 
desperate reliance, followed through height and depth, 
through the ruins and the rampart. The solid and the 
lofty were alike easily overcome ; and unchallenged by 
sentinel, and unimpeded by obstacles which might have 
checked the assault of an army, he followed on, until the 
huge gates of the cathedral once more frowned before 
him. The apparition again flitted through, like the mote 
in a sunbeam, ascended the wall, surmounted the battle 





HEBE. 


145 


went, and then, with a wild gesture and a sepulchral cry. 
vanished from his gaze. 

. Overcome by indescribable emotions, the boyar stood 
with bis eyes fixed on the pinnacle. His feet wore rooted 
to the spot : he almost deemed himself bound by an actual 
spell to the vicinage which had been the scene of events 
more marvellous than the wildest fictions of his fabling land. 

Ho watched until’he saw a light tinging the pinnacle. 

ith his flesh creeping, he imagined in this sign the re¬ 
turning lustre of the potent being that had given him so 
much unwilling wisdom ; and he prepared himself for 
what adventure more.fearful and final might be still his fate. 

The light increased. From the feeblest struggle with 
darkness it had already become white.; the- white was 
soon touched with rose ; the rose was soon mingled with 
gold. It vvas dawn. The boyar’s eye rejoicingly recog¬ 
nised the coming of that sunrise, before which nature and 
the mind alike throw off their garb of darkness ; and with 
a heart oppressed with its fatal knowledge, yet insensibly 
cheered by the universal cheering of the face of earth, he 
; hastened to his home. 

The mixture of revelry and anxious council which 
occupied the court of the Hospodkr, at .a juncture when 
the installation of the new sovereign was likely to be fol¬ 
lowed by a-new war, made the absence of the boyar during 
the night a matter of such frequency, as to prevent every 
suspicion in his household ; and he passed to his chamber 
through ranges of weary domestics, who looked on his 
return only as a permission for them to fling themselves 
down on the floors, and forget balls and boyars in the land 
of dreams, where the slave is as great as iiis king. 

On reaching Ins chamber,the grateful obscurity prompt¬ 
ed him to rest. His limbs were worn with fatigue, but 
the fatigue was less of his frame than of his mind. Ho 
threw himself on the embroidered couch ; and yet there 
had been times when he could have slept more refresh¬ 
ingly on the bare ground. 

His eyes were sealed in vain : his mind was restless, 
and he saw in his uneasy slumber the shapes and hazards 
of the night. The apparition rose again to appal him : 

Vol. I.— 13 




146 


tiie wallachian’s "tale. 

he felt it approach ; he felt a hot and withering air round 
him. A sullen voice murmured in his ears ; he adjured 
the phantom to “ speak its purpose, and relieve him from 
an uncertainty worse than death.” The form moved away : 
he saw it throw a long beam of solid fire upon the table, 
in which he read words of mystery and fear. He attempted 
to grasp the fiery document; he felt himself violently re¬ 
pulsed, and awoke. $ 

In his disturbed sleep, he had left the couch, and strayed 
round the chamber. The distant sounds of the city had 
probably administered to the alarms of his dream ; and in 
his ramblings he had struck his hand forcibly on the marble 
table. 

But, to bis amazement, all was not the working of fan¬ 
tasy. Upon that table gleamed a pale glow-worm radiance, 
fading as the daylight penetrated through the draperies of 
the casements. He gazed upon the expiring flame with 
an indescribable feeling. He-was habitually above super¬ 
stition ; yet the night had deeply perplexed him, and he 
looked upon this self-sustained effulgence as an ancient 
worshipper at Dodona or Delphi might have watched the 
first oracular whispers of the trees, or the first kindling of 
inspiration along the features of the pythoness. 

He came still nearer, saw that the flame shaped itself 
into the characters of writing, and read these words on 
the marble:— 

u Your guilty mistrust of the power (hat last night offered 
you knowledge for nothing, then impeded your full know¬ 
ledge, and now compels you to buy it at a price. If you 
would know the fate of Theodore, if you would rescue the 
honour of Constantine, and if you would save the life of 
Hebe, to-morrow will find you on the road to the Danube. 
Go in secret, or you go in vain. Demand an audience of 
the Pacha of Bulgaria. Return in secret, and be thence¬ 
forth high, honoured, and happy.” 

The words vanished away as he read. But their import 
was fixed in his soul. At another crisis, he would have 
scorned the whole transaction, as a device to involve him 
in some idle adventure. He knew perfectly the contri¬ 
vances by which chemistry had of old been made to disturb 
the less scientific imaginations. But the w ‘ coincidence 






HEUE. 


147 


here was too strong for human means.” lie, however, 
made no unthinking resolve. 

The bovar gave every hour of that day to a close inves¬ 
tigation of the circumstances. A secure conclusion was 
not to be attained. Yet it was obvious that, whether pre 
ternatural or human, an extraordinary knowledge of events, 
which now occupied the chief interest of his being, was 
possessed by those strange visitants. 

The impression was so powerful, that had he been a 
private individual, he would have risked all results, and set 
out for the Danube instantly. But a new perplexity arose. 
He held a public trust of the highest rank ; his seat in the 
council involved matters of the first importance ; and the 
pressure of the times was formidable, from the contending 
claims of Russia and the Porte, which might be followed 
at a moment by invasion. 

His secret journey too might not remain the secret of a 
day; while his absence at this critical period, and pecu¬ 
liarly his absence in the actual territory of the Porte, must 
lay him under suspicions alike dishonourable to his charac¬ 
ter* and hazardous to his final purposes. 

He now rejected the oracle, and to extricate himself 
from thinking further on the subject, went to seek Hebe. 
He found her ; but found her looking such a picture of 
anguish, that his resolution was shaken at the instant. 
Her death-like paleness, the sighs that interrupted her few 
words, and the nervous and overwhelming emotion that 
transpired in all thac she said or did, convinced him how 
essential to her very life was some elucidation of the fate 
of her bethrothed. 

It was in vain that he attempted to give her young and 
bereaved heart the hope, that his philosophy could not mas¬ 
ter for itself, Hebe, too, overcome by the evident sympa¬ 
thy with which he looked upon her bitter struggle for com¬ 
posure, at length divulged the cause of those sufferings, 
that had even within a single night made so rapid and 
melancholy a change in her returning tranquillity. 

Scared from her sleep by the storm to which the boyar 
had been exposed, she had seen a form before her, in 
whose description he recognised his mysterious guide. It 
had uttered words which she felt like fire in her brain. It 





148 


TIIE WALLACIIIATs’s TALE. 

told of u dangers to herself, to the house of her more than 
father, to all she loved ; and finally, declared that on the 
boyar’s zeal and intrepidity must depend her hope, her love, 
and her existence.” 

Cantacuzene hesitated no longer to renew his purpose ; 
yet he reasoned on the idleness of giving the reins to 
imagination ; talked of the propensity of young and strongly 
agitated minds to fabricate visions into substance ; recom¬ 
mended rest ; and promised, when he next saw her, to 
bring good news. She thanked him with a sad smile, and 
in the grateful impulse of the moment, prayed that every 
blessing and protection of Heaven might be on the head 
of the noble Cantacuzene, 

He heard the supplication in silence, but he heard it as 
the prompting of a superior wisdom to the enterprise which 
was to restore this creature of beauty and sorrow to hap¬ 
piness. He left her still pouring out the aspirations of 
eloquent gratitude, and hastened to his chamber, where 
lie spent the remaining hour^ in solitary preparation for 
his journey. - . „ * \ o 

At night-fall he set forth alpne ; gave an anxious glance 
to the twinkling lights of his palace ; plunged into the 
wild roads and utter darkness of the champaign ; and, by 
dawn, was on his way to the frontier. 

As the evening sun was throwing its red light over the 
plains of Thrace, the boyar reached the Danube. The 
brown walls of Rudschuk, still marked with many Rus¬ 
sian cannon-shot, rose massively before him, topped with 
minarets'slender as lances, standing out among domes and 
bulging roofs, that looked like a colossal Tartar camp. 

It was his first view of a city under the dominion of the 
Turk ; that bold Scythian, who', sprung from slaves in his 
native Caucasus, had so often conquered the discipline of 
the civilized south, yet conquered only to remain more 
thoroughly a slave. He heard the Imaums raising their 
sonorous voices in the air, while all the other voices of 
life were gradually sinking away ; and the sound reminded 
him, with a painful sensation, that he was now leaving the 
land of comparative security, to throw himself into the 
grasp of a despotism whose mercy was.at best but caprices 





I 


HEBE. . 149 

whose cruelty was a principle, and whose only law was 
that of the stronger. 

But this was not the time to deliberate. A few hours 
would decide questions that, to his excited feelings, 
were worth the sacrifice of a life. He hailed a Turkish 
boat that lay creeping its way among the yellow waters of 
the mighty river ; sprang on board, and was speedily run¬ 
ning through the flat islets that turn this queen of waters 
into a Dutch lake. 

“ Now, friend,” said the boyar to his boatman, u you 
must do me another service on my landing, and show me 
the way to some place where I may lodge for the night.” 

The request, assisted by a piastre, put the Turk into 
good-humour ; he instantly dropped his national sternness, 
and with a look of jocularity, hoped that his passenger 
was not “ in the habit of taking his lodgings in trust of the 
generation of rascals that plied between Giurgevo and 
Rudschuk, for in their hands he ran three chances, one of 
which was a certainty ; he was either pilfered, cast over¬ 
board, or tricked into the Pacha’s hands, who regularly 
sent such prizes to the slave bazaar in Stamboul.” * 

The boyar, though struck by the oddity of the commu¬ 
nication, gravely expressed his belief that he should escape 
the whole three. 

“ No doubt,” said the boatman : u this morning the 
crow flew over my left shoulder, a sign that I should meet 
a good fare before night, and that 1 should treat him like 
a boatman of honour. There are honest men to be found 
in all trades. I myself knew two lawyers, and one prime 
minister, that I should trust with any thing—but my money 
And among the navigators of this muddy river, I must own 
that you have alighted on a splendid exception. Bely 
upon it, my good friend, that from this bank to the bank 
of the Bosphorus, you could not have been more lucky in. 
your choice of boat or boatman.” 

u I am satisfied on that point,” said the boyar, « Evor\ 
man best Knows himself, and as he cannot be suspected 
of mistake on the subject— 

* Constantinople. 

13 * 

* 


150 tiie wallachian’s tale. 

u Mistake !” interrupted the Turk with a laugh. u The 
thing is impossible. I never mistook a man’s character 
in my life—the more was my ill luck ; for if I had conde¬ 
scended to be a little more in the dark, the most high and 
mighty the confidential secretary of the most high and 
mighty sultan, Selim the Third, would not now be eating 
horsebeans, drinking water, and rowing your sublimity 
across the Danube.” 

'idle boyar stared at the fallen depository of power : 
and thought that he perceived in the bold aspect and strong 
glance of the athletic rower some indications of what 
might have been the haughty favourite. The sudden al¬ 
ternations of rank and obscurity in the Ottoman govern¬ 
ment lessened the improbability of both the rise and the fall. 

“ I can tell you more than that,” pursued the panting 
ex-minister, as he lay upon his oar, and suffered the boat 
to sweep along with the stream. “The pacha Achmet 
ben Ali, who for two reasons of his own, plunder and fear, 
and one of mine, revenge, hides his head in yonder castle, 
is as arrant a caitiff as if he had held an oar since the day 
he was born. My own history I disdain to give; it is 
written on the noses of the Russian cavalry, who lie fatten¬ 
ing the soil between the Dnieper and the Danube ; and on 
the backs of the Austrian grenadiers, who remain paying 
the same compliment to Servia. Achmet’s history is 
written on the soles of men’s feet, after beginning on the 
soles of men’s shoes.” 

He laughed loudly at the conceit. “ The riddle is this : 
he began life as a cobbler, and lie rose in life by his ex¬ 
pertness in the bastinado. On my arrival in the seraglio 
to assist the wisdom of my imperial and most magnificent 
master, Selim the Third, of immortal memory, and forgot¬ 
ten the moment that his rogue of a nephew threw him into 
chains ; i found this Achmet at the summit of his profes¬ 
sion, the most expert proficient in the use of the bamboo of 
any bostangee* since the taking of Stamboul.V 

“If I have ever possessed any talent, it ha^been that 
of discerning the value of things that other people over¬ 
look. The bostangee became my right-hand man at 

* Attendant and guard of tlie seraglio. 





IiE,BE. 


151 


once. In Christendom, you think yourselves the very es¬ 
sence of humanity and wisdom ; yet you imprison, banish, 
and hang ten for one that the moslemin ever touched. 
The sultan is privileged by the blessed and merciful law 
of our prophet to cut off fourteen heads a day, without any 
one’s questioning him upon the matter. But the blessed 
and merciful law of laziness says another thing : the work 
is troublesome. It spoil? clothes, scimitars, and the temper. 
The refurnishing of harems too is expensive ; and thanks 
to your virtuou- grandees, the market stock of Circas¬ 
sians and Greeks is so much monopolised at home, that they 
are becoming more expensive every day. Janizaries will 
not now suffer their heads to be cut off without grumbling, 
whatever they might do in better times; and as for the 
heads of Moreotes and islanders, 1 believe on my soul that, 
like the locusts, the more you extinguish of them, the more 
come in their place. 

“ In Christendom, you banish for a shilling, you im¬ 
prison for a yard of cotton, you rday for a sheep ; while vve 
never take the life of man but for a cause worthy of jus¬ 
tice. The scimitar smites only for rebellion, for wearing 
a green turban if you are not a hadji, or for twitching a 
hair out of the sacred camel’s tail.” 

“You omit,” said the boyar, smiling in turn, “the still 
more unpardonable crime of doubting that the thirty-third 
chapter of the Koran was. written with a pen of light a 
hundred miles long by the angel Gabriel.” 

The boatman shook him by the hand with gay fami¬ 
liarity. “ I see you are a man after my own heart,” ex¬ 
claimed he, throwing himself back in unrestrained laugh¬ 
ter. “ I wish for your sake that all your doctors on the 
left bank of the Danube were but half as rational as our 
fat old muftis ; you would not then be under the necessity 
of pilfering each other’s purses, and cutting each other’s 
throats, for the honour of a rag of holiness, of which you 
might have the exact fellow in price and purity from any 
old clothes’ shop in the shadow of your mighty mother of, 
Casan, or your mighty father of St. Peter’s. 

“Now, the mufti asks our assent to a plain story, which 
every man may believe with a safe conscience, for no man 
can prove it to be untrue. 



1.52 


THE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 


»■ ' 

“ As I live by this oar, I swear that I cannot tell 
whether the angel Gabriel may not have written the whole 
6f the Koran ; or whether, as in my own case, secretary 
though I was, all the penmanship was by deputy. Those 
points I leave to the doctors ; who, having gained pelisses 
worth a thousand crowns by them, and wearing turbans 
a yard and a half above the rest of mankind, of course 
know more than we, who, having no interest in the mat¬ 
ter, have taken no trouble about it. But let the longest- 
bearded mufti that ever rivalled the honours of a Cretan 
goat, or the proudest ulema* that ever melted under fur 
in the dog-days, ask me to believe that a piece of ox-bone 
had ever been a saint; that a peep at a scull through a 
glass-case bad ever turned wooden legs into flesh and 
blood ; or that the handiwork of a painter that 1 would not 
suffer to daub my boat, could talk, weep, cure the gout, 
and stop an inundation ; there I own that my tongue would 
he in danger of giving his holiness something not far from 
a reason for doubting my belief, and making my head bid 
farewell to the neck which it has so little desire to leave. 

44 But here,” pursued he, lies the quay where I must 
try to land you in the teeth of those clumsy barges of 
pulse and papas,| cabbages for the moslernen, and con¬ 
fessors for the Greeks—and the one. half of the cargo just 
as wise as the other.” 


CHAPTER X. 

He pushed in boldly, and ran on board the commodore 
of the cabbage boats. But there his success ended. The 
confessorial cargo rose in arms, and poured on him a vol¬ 
ley of river eloquence that completely overwhelmed his 
volubility. Long as the boyar had lived in the highest 
ranks of mankind, never bad he seen more furious irrita¬ 
tion about nothing; and his fullest acquaintance with 

] t*reek priests, 


* Lawyer. 





1IEBE. 


15S 


camps could not supply him with a hundredth part of the 
tropes and metaphors of the river tongue. The boat¬ 
men, as might be expected from professional principles, 
stood by, much amused at the defeat of their fellow ; and 
occasionally administering such figures of speech as they 
presumed might give additional effect to the pungency 
of the papas. 

u We must abandon our object,” observed the boyar, 
smiling. 44 We have no chance of being suffered to reach 
a port here.” 

“ To get a place and to keep it,” replied the boatman 
tranquilly, 44 is the maxim all over the world, as well as 
among the cabbage-boats of t he Danube.” 

“ But what do you propose next ?” 

Li What, if I had done in other times, I should not 
have been here—“go with the stream.’ ” 

He put this policy into practice, and suffering the boat 
to glide, continued with his eyes fixed on the bustle of the 
barges, that were now squabbling and crowding to the 
shore. The boyar, anxious to land, pointed to the sinking 
light, and asked why he continued to look on the quarrel. 

44 For reasons that 1 learned before I ever expected to 
see your face: I am trying to find out which is the more 
foolish and furious of the parties.” 

“ To join in the battle^ and assist the right side, I sup¬ 
pose,” said a boyar with a sceptical glance. 

44 You have seen too much of the world, my good sir, 
to suppose any such thing,” said the boatman. 44 1 learned 
the true maxim long ago in the divan. If a minister is 
turned out of office, his natural hope is in tiie populace ; 
and the more thoroughly rabble hi§ .friends are, the better 
is his chance. No scruples about character are likely to 
be made on either 1 side ; their measures have an energy 
«worth all the lazy virtues of the earth ; and the minister 
who had been kicked out of the seraglio the week before, 
as even too black for the honour of execution by the state- 
hatchet, rides back in triumph on the swell of the cobblers 
and charcoal porters of Stainhoul, purer at every step he 
goes, till the surge lifts him up to the cushions of the coun¬ 
cil—the vizier sent by Mahomet himself to save his 
people.” 



154 


TIIE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 


But the Danube, freshened by the flow of the mountain 
torrents after the storm, began to swell and sweep them 
down with violent rapidity. 

“ What do you think,” said the fallen secretary, u of a 
voyage to Stamboul ? This villanous current perhaps owes 
me a grudge for the character I have given of its masters, 
and would take me off again to the walls of the seraglio. 
Well, it was a glorious game after allthe fire flashed iri 
his dark eye, as, strongly gesticulating, he uttered the 
words. “ It was worth the hazard of a life, of a thousand 
lives, to be the ruler of all that my glance fell upon ; to 
see the bold, the mighty, the rich, and the rabble, worship 
me ; to send out my armies, to sweep the seas with my 
fleets, to shake and terrify, to subdue and hold in submis¬ 
sion, myriads on myriads of the most daring, desperate, 
and haughty of mankind ; to make the Arab, as he started 
from his sand, look, not to the sun, but to the spot where 
my stronger beams shone ; to make the Persian, trembling 
in Teheran, ask his astrologer bow long, not the will ot 
fate, but my will, was to suffer him to sit upon his throne; 
to fix the fierce eye of the Muscovite-, The frigid eye of the 
Austrian, the furious subtlety of France, and the slow 
strength of England on one man, one alone, among the 
twenty millions of the empire of the faithful—and that 
one me! • • - . 

u But here we are under the suburbs of this most ragged 
of towns, peopled by the most thievish of Turks, and 
squeezed by the most roguish of governors. And now, 
before we part, ler me ask whether you have any particu¬ 
lar business with the magnificent and renowned Achmet 

Pacha ?” , . ' 

• * ■ , • 

“ I have,” said the boyar, “ and business of great im¬ 
portance to me and mine.” 

u Then let me give you, not advice, for you have too 
much sense to thank me for what every one gfves ; and 
no one gives, but because he knows it to be worth 
nothing ;—but take with you a sketch of his character, 
tvhich you could have from no authority so high as my 
own :— 

u He is a tyrant, an extortioner, and a lover of blood—in 
one word, a pacha. But as nature sometimes thwarts the 
finest qualities for human mischief, just as she forces the 



JiEBE. 


155 


! 




shark to turn on his back before he can bite ; the serpent 
to be content with one buffalo at a time ; and the conqueror 
to stop when the snow falls, if it were only to leave man¬ 
kind to grow up through the winter for the summer’s crop 
of the scimitar; so, indolence tempers the exquisite 
faculties of the Turk. Even Achmet will not bastinado 
you, unless he can get something by the operation. 
Though, if you have money enough in your sash to stir up 
his avarice, without enough to bribe it, never will you 
leave those castle walls within a foot and a half as tall as 
you entered them. Yet with the renowned pacha I have 
some influence still.” 

The boatman requested the traveller’s tablets, and 
wrote a few lines ;—“ That you may not be surprised,’’ 
said he, “at so culpable an accomplishment as scribbling 
in an Ottoman minister, I must let you into the secret that, 
as such, I was never guilty of touching a pen. The ac¬ 
quirement was forced upon me bv the mother of all 
crimes—money. The traders whom I ferried over cheated 
me so mercilesslv, that unless I chose to be starved, I 
must learn to keep their names in remembrance in some 
way or other. To suffer my memory to load itself with 
the* freight of butter and Austrians was a degradation im¬ 
possible to be borne. In self-defence I learned this vul¬ 
gar art of the infidel; and, conscious as 1 am, of having 
thus set the seal to my expulsion from the divan for ever, 
if it were known, I am not sorry if it may yet save your 
feet from the bastinado or your neck from the bowstring.” 

To Cantacuzene the Turkish was a dead language ; 
but he folded up the billet, and promised to have recourse 
to it, in case of necessity. 

“Necessity!” exclaimed the boatman. “ Before you 
have been twelve hours inside those gates, it will depend 
on this scrawl whether I see you tumbling without 
your brains from one of the loopholes to feed the 
sturgeons, or you are safe and sound at your pipe 
and pillaff. 1 make no inquiry about your business; but 
men like you,” and he fixed his penetrating eyes on the 
boyar, “ do not rove the world for nothing.” 

lie now amused himself with European sketches. 
“ Your Englishman travels to spend his money, and curse 
every spot where he cannot find beef and politics ; vour 







356 


THE WALLA CHlAN’s TALE. 

Frenchman to curl his hair and write lampoons ; your 
German to enrich his own barbarian jargon with the bar¬ 
barism of every other jargon; your Russian to rob your 
Turk.,—but you are no trader ; no, l ’ll be sworn that you 
never sold a pumpkin or a pistachio in your life. You 
could better tell whether the Czar shaves looking towards 
the North Pole or the Santa Sophia ; or the sultan shakes 
his beard more towards France or Austria,” 

The boyar disclaimed this knowledge of sovereign 
toilettes. 

“ So best for you !” replied his doubting companion. 
“ But Achmet’s story will grow as cold as this evening’s 
breeze. -' . ■, . -; . 

“On my appointment to office, I found every thing in 
confusion ; all the provinces, as usual, either in rebellion 
or starving ; the rabble of the city burning the houses 
over their own heads every night by thousands, for the 
purpose of enlightening the sublime brother of the sun 
and moon; the janizaries carrying their kettles through 
the streets with a fresh aga’s head in them every day ; 
and the ladies of the liaram, from the sultana-mother down 
to the dingiest Nubian that-ever, word a nose, scolding, 
crying, clamouring, and vowing revenge, from morning till 
night. 

“ The business without the seraglio looked had enough ; 
but the business within was unspeakable; I own that I 
was perplexed. Avoub* himself would have gone out 
of his senses with the din. The kislar agat came to me 
every five minutes with tears in his eyes, and instinctively 
turning his hand round his neck, to feel whether the head 
was still upon his shoulders. 

u The furious frolics of the ladies made his hideous black 
visage more hideous if possible ; his woolly locks stood up 
like porcupine’s quills ; and in his most bahoor.ish lan¬ 
guage, the African attempted to tell me of the Venetian 
mirrors dashed into fragments by those pretty tormentors ; 
of the cashmeres worth a thousand dollars a piece, ripped 
into a thousand fragments before his eyes ; of the piles of 
French lace, Persian tissues, Saxon porcelain, and a hun¬ 
dred other fine things, torn, burnt, or flung at his head by 

* Job, still the great model of oriental endurance. 

| The chief governor of the haram. 


HEBB. 


.■f V' 

to i 

those doves of Paradise. The plain fact was, the whole 
harem was in a state of mutiny. 

14 1 demanded an audience of the sultan, and found him 
in his kiosk,* trying to smoke away thought. I told him 
to lay down his pipe, or be prepared to lay down his 
sceptre. He was in despair, refused to listen to reason, 
and comforted himself in the national way, with saying, 
that if it was written in the book of destiny that' his career 
must be cut short, it must. 

44 I insisted upon it, that if a rnoslemin takes physic to 
cure himself of a headache, he may as well take a little 
trouble to save his head. 

44 To satisfy me of the hopelessness of affairs, his high¬ 
ness led me to the terrace of the upper gardens ; and 
from that most hallowed spot, gave me a full view of the 
riot within. Riot!—why, by the beard of my father, the 
word is tame ; the thing was rebellion, rage, fury. The 
women had all got loose, and were acting according to 
the good-will and pleasure of the sex, to the amount of 
dogging the unfortunate slaves and mutes in every direc* 
tion , chasing their old governe- es with rods through the 
grounds ; and breaking every thing that came in their 
way, windows, furniture, the heads of the negroes, and the 
commandment against swearing 

44 Since I was born, i neve;- heard such a melee of 
voices, such screaming, singing, shouting, and laughter * 
never was there such , an uproar from human throats. 
There were enough of them too ; for the five hundred fair 
wives of the sultan looked like scattered diamonds among 
the mob of brown, red, black, and yellow monsters, that 
came rolling, tumbling, and fighting, out of the courts of 
the haram into the gardens. A wilderness of monkeys was 
silence to them ; a wilderness of tigers was tame. And 
what do you think was the mighty cause ?” 

41 The most trifling in the world, of course,” said the 
boyar. “ But, as any thing would have done it, from a 
toothpick to a throne, I cannot venture to guess. The 
love of having their own way, perhaps.” 

u Right. Though you Christians keep no harams, ye* 

I am satisfied that man, in ail parts of the globe, knows 

* . 

* Pavilion. 

Vo*. [.—14 





THE WALLACHIAx’s TALE. 


158 

> 

tolerably well the nature of the case. The immediate 
uproar arose from the seizure of a French smuggler in 
the natural disguise of an ape on a Jew-pedlar’s back. 

“ The fellow was an agent of the ambassador,' and car¬ 
ried with him a cargo of ribands showy enough to set a 
whole empire of women in insurrection. The spy was 
seized, and his cargo was unluckily embezzled by the 
kislar aga ; for the private emolument, as usual, of that 
grand functionary. The matter might still have been 
hushed up in the happy secrecy that extinguishes so many 
other Ottoman blunders ; but the black brute’s avarice 
spoiled all. He began to sell the ribands to the sultanas, 
on his own account : the price was enormous. But what 
will not a beauty give to be more beautiful ? Necklaces, 
bracelets, and tiaras heavy with jewels, daily disappeared. 
The old governesses were in consternation, the negresses 
were stripped, and the mutes were whipped, with no im¬ 
provement of their knowledge ; and the sultanas were 
threatened in vam with the sack and a plunge in the Bos¬ 
phorus, 

“ Nothing would do. In the midst of this universal strip¬ 
ping and whipping, it transpired, for the hazard of all ears, 
and the sultan’s throne, that the precious commodities for 
which the sultanas were sacrificing their topazes by the 
pound, ought actually to have been theirs without the ex¬ 
pense of a piastre. The news dropped among those hea¬ 
venly creatures, like a match into a powder-magazine. 
The haram gates flew open at once ; and if, instead of 
crazy old timber, they had been made of marble or iron, 
they would have done the same before the torrent that now 
rushed upon them. 

“ The kislar aga’s soul and body were the first demand 
from their two thousand pairs of lips. But the old rogue 
knew well enough what he was to expect; and the very 
first symptom of the disturbance had sent him flying for his 
life to my footstool. Then went head over heels into 
baths, tubs, and fountains, every guardian wretch that 
they could lay hold of, male and female, from the wrinkled 
superintendent of the Odalisques, herself as proud as a 
sultana and as bitter as a beauty past her time, down to 
the Ethiopian mute that resembled his brother monkey in 
every thing blit a beard and a tail. 



HEBE. 


159 


The lovely insurgents at length unluckily threw up 
their eyes, where I—may the prophet forgive ipe for being 
such a fool!—was indulging mine. 1 had always a pas¬ 
sion for wild nature, from the time that 1 was a camel- 
driver among the swamps of the Euphrates ; but all that 
I had ever seen was child’s play to the sight let loose 
before me. 

“ A troop of Georgians rushed up the side of the terrace. 

I had been noted in the market for giving a large price for 
the ornaments of mv household, but his highness, as the 
brother of the sun and moon, having the first right to the 
celestials, his purse sweeps the bazaar. The twenty or 
thirty half frantic creatures that bounded up the terrace to 
wreak their vengeance on me. were the very finest speci¬ 
mens ever sold by Christian mothers to Moslemin masters ; 
they were as handsome and wicked as a herd of panthers. 

I had nothing to do but to fly for it. His highness dared 
trust his sublimity among them no more than myself, and 
I led him down trembling, to hide in the haram. 

“■But the doors were shut; the she-rabble would be 
upon us in an instant; and ten to one but the empire 
would have to mourn together the most frightened of 
sovereigns and the most, brilliant of secretaries. 

“ In this extremity, I proposed that he should get upon 
my shoulders, and climb in at the window. But his attempt 
was abortive. As there was no time for etiquette, i made 
him take my place, mounted the shoulders that bear the 
weight of empire, broke the panes, pulled away the bars, 
and dragged him up after me into the Ghalved Yiertzey, 
the winter-hall where the sultanas try to amuse themselves 
with running races, quarrelling, Italian farces, and shuttle¬ 
cock. We were pursued by the whole multitude. 

“ But luckily for us, the room was loaded with lumbei 
of all kinds, left since the sultanas had gone to the sum¬ 
mer apartments ; old cabinets, fragments of tapestry, 
broken chandeliers, and clothes-presses crammed with the 
dismantled finery of the slaves that they whipped into 
actors. Yet all this could not keep out the prying eyes 
of two thousand women ; for what on earth could ? Even 
I was in despair ; until, by one of those accid«its which 
happen only to men of genius, in pulling away an immense. 





I&Q THE WALLACHIAlPs TALE. 

Hanging of scarlet cloth, T saw two French mirrors, tali 
enough to show a full-dressed sultana, feathers and all. 

“ I pushed his astonished highness behind one of them, 
and plunged myself behind the other The principle is 
matchless, though the discovery is old ; for no woman 
ever thinks of looking at the back of a mirror, when she 
can see her own charming self in the front. 

“ The crowd were soon on the spot; all the bostangis 
in the service could not have kept them out ; doors and 
windows flew into powder before them, and the furious 
tide poured in. Boxes, presses, hangings, chandeliers— 
every thing that could be flung about was tossed like 
chaffin the wind. All Was noise, vengeance, and clouds 
of dust. The secretary must have fallen a victim, as the 
adviser of the sultan ; and probably the sultan would have 
followed, for an example to all Selims to come. As it 
was, we were almost suffocated. 

u But my principle was founded in all-powerful nature, 
and if saved us both The sight of the mirrors was magi¬ 
cal. Not a woman of the two thousand but had a glance 
and not a woman but indulged herself with more than one. 
The rivalry turned from extinguishing the government to 
eclipsing each other. By u law, which it is not my busi¬ 
ness to comprehend, no woman ever thought herself posi¬ 
tively not worth looking at ; nor ever looked at herself 
without discovering that there was something in her 
physiognomy that, well repaid her study. 

“ But here the examination was before a tribunal of 
critics that would suffer none of the tender misconceptions 
of judges in their own cause ; none of those little bland 
partialities that reconcile the solitary spectator to a visage, 
where all the world beside see the deficiencies of nature or 
the touches of tim«. Youth and loveliness here stood in 
inevitable supremacy over their unhappy opposites. 

“ The lofty countenance of the Greek, the Circassian 
playfulness of feature, and the glow of the Georgian com¬ 
plexion, were grouped in ruinous contrast with the old and 
olive-skinned, the copper-coloured, and the downright 
sable, flat-nosed and woolly-haired. Peals of scornful 
laughter at the display shook the dome. The daughters 
of Arabia, India, and Africa, were soon driven away, to 
hate the art of glass-making, and to think of revenge. 


HEBE. 


161 


But the display of the beauties themselves, now mis¬ 
tresses of the field, was the very reverse of conciliation. 
Age, which will penetrate even the latticed bowers of the 
seraglio, had paid his ominous visit to many a face, till that 
moment unconscious of his call. Sultanas, who had sat 
supreme, not less in charms than in rank, found themselves 
for the first time in sudden danger of a fall from their 
royalty. Even the Georgian rose of a twelvemonth’s 
transplanting into this .garden of houris. was not quite so 
rose-like as the flower of a week brought blooming from 
the fresh air of its mountains ; and the Greek eye itself 
flashed less irresistible radiance after a year or two of 
triumph, than the newly-imported diamonds from Chios 
and Rhodes. 

14 in Turkey the men are silent enough, but the women 
possess the sex’s privilege in as blessed abundance as under 
any sky of the globe. The comparisons defied conceal¬ 
ment. There are times when truth is told even in courts; 
and I never, on any occasion in the course of my changing 
life, heard it told with greater plainness and volubility. 

44 From opinions, the debate rose to sneers of the lowly, 
and commands of the high. The riot was beginning 
again ; and 1 was in the most unquestionable fear lest some 
friend of peace should knock down the mirrors to put an 
end to the controversy. But when I heard the very pro¬ 
posal made, and was preparing to die with honour, luckily 
the sultana-mother, hopeless of a sentence in her own 
favour, ordered the whole assemblage to retire. 

44 Some remaining deference for a woman who had 
ordered innumerable rivals to be turned out of the holy 
precincts of the seraglio without more than the caftan on 
their backs, for sale to the ass-drivers of Karaman, and 
who might do so again, when she pleased, produced a 
slight hesitation. A rumour artfully spread, that the 
Frenchman had been set at liberty with his stock, and was 
at that instant waiting the honour of their selection, com¬ 
pleted the movement; and to my great nelight, the last 
retiring steps of the last of those exquisite tormentors gave 
me an opportunity of standing upright, after being squeezed 
double for an hour; and of relieving his sublime majesty 
from a weight of rags, dust, and worm-eaten wood, that 

14 * 







162 


THE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


X. ' J ». 9 

had nearJy obscured the mighty successor of Abdulhamid 
from the sight of his loving subjects for ever. 

44 If the sultan was still in despair, his trusty secretary 
was not much better; but fortune never deserts the bold. 
X took my terrified master away, washed his face in the 
next fountain, and gave him the advice, worth its weight 
in gold, that he should repose the burden of his sceptre on 
me for the next four-and-twenty hours. 

44 The advice was taken ; and while he went to supper 
and his pipe, I went to my cabinet, and sent for Achmet. 

44 The bostangee appeared, after some search ; for 
every male creature had been put to the rout, during the 
empire of women. 4 Bostangee.' said \ to the trembling 
slave, 4 have you ever bastinadoed a sultana ?’— 4 Never 1’ 
said he, with the uneasy look of one whose answer, right 
or wrong, may cost him his neck. 4 Then,’ said X, 4 you 
shall have the opportunity without delay. 5 55 


CXIAPTER XL 

44 The ladies had returned from ravaging the gardens tc 
rifling the haram, and were still as busy as ever. I deter¬ 
mined that. they should have no time to let their partisans 
without the wall know how affairs were going on within, 
which might have been a signal for the storm of the 
seraglio. 

44 At the head of a detachment of mutes I dgrted into 
the haram, seized the first half dozen that 1 met, hurried 
them out. and delivered them over to the bamboo of 
Achmet. Nothing could be more adroitly laid on, or with 
happier effect. 1 made ten successive expeditions of the 
same kind; and before night fall, fifty or sixty of the 
fairest of the fair could not have walked their own length, 
nor worn a shoe of the size of your boot, for all the gold in 
the treasury. 

44 Talk to me of legislation, the bamboo is worth all the. 
wisdom that ever dropped from under the sliadow of tire 




HEBE. 


\ 


In¬ 


most profound of human brows. The sultanas came to 
their senses; by day-break I had two thousand tender 
penitents : tears and terrors acknowledged their fault; 
and if twice the pedlars of the habitable world had come to 
tempt them with twice the frippery, not. one of those 
pretty philosophers would have breathed a sigh towards the 
temptation, in the sight of Achmet and his bamboo.” 

“ But, my good friend,” said the boyar, had you no 
compunction yourself in this mode of administering the 
law ? The cruelty of the bastinado—” 

“ Cruelty !” retorted the ex-minister. “ What was the 
choice ? There was nothing to be done but to apply to 
their heels or their heads. You would noi have me apply 
to their reason, I suppose. My predecessors would have 
set the bowstring at work. I mercifully tried an expedi¬ 
ent which, without stopping the breath of a sex that, 
whether handling a sceptre or handling an oar, 1 worship 
from the bottom of my soul; stopped their travels in 
search of sultans and secretaries—I lelit them their 
tongues, whatever I might have done with tiieirtoes. And 
1 take it for granted that you have not lived till this time 
of day, for every man must have his share of this world’s 
trials, without knowing that, as long as the loveliest part 
of creation have the use of that instrument, they have a 
pleasure that they feel worth the world beside.” 

“ Well,” said the boyar, “ you got out of that melee 
incomparably. But how did the sultan approve of the 
display of his wives to any eyes but his own ? Your life 
must have been in danger for the profanation of looking 
at so many pretty women at once.” 

“ No doubt,” said the ex-boatman, laughing, “if I had 
given his highness time to recover his wits, and be grate¬ 
ful, I should not be now r trundling this paddle on the Dan¬ 
ube : I should have been drinking sherbet with the houris 
under the emerald-tree of Paradise, a hundred miles high 
and a thousand broad, within the next half hour. 

“ But sultans are sometimes like other men ; and when 
they are thoroughly frightened, think chiefly of them¬ 
selves. The times were delicate. The janizaries, in 
any one of their combustions, might have despised the 
empty promenading through the streets, and walked intc 


i 



164 


THE WALL ACHI AN ’ S TALE. 


the seraglio : and while those visits were in SelimY 
thoughts, the whole world might have scanned every dim* 
pie on the cheek of his highest priced wife, without dis¬ 
turbing a hair of his sovereign whiskers. 

u My business was next to quiet the janizaries. The 
sound of their kettles was pealing through every corner 
of the city. I sent for Achmet; waited till night-fall; 
caught the ringleaders drowsy after the day’s marching, 
and, in spite of Mahomet, most of them more or less 
drunk. The bamboo did its office, and did it well. By 
day-light, when their regiments gathered again from their 
ten thousand hovels to flourish about the streets, until 
they should take it into their loyal heads to storm the 
Porte ; there was not an aga* among them. They rushed 
to the coffee-houses, where they had seen them installed 
the night before. There they found, instead of showy 
rebels, a hundred and fifty miserahles, without a foot to 
stand on, swearing by the beard of the Prophet that they 
had been beaten into a jelly by the spirits of darkness, and 
screaming for hot water and opium to console their re¬ 
morse and their cuticle. The hearers, too holy to provoke 
the wrath of the sacred distributors of such blows, slipped 
quietly away ; and rebellion sank down like the smoke of 
an empty pipe. 

“ I made my next experiment on the spectators at a 
prodigious fire. Five hundred houses were blazing at a 
* time, to inform the sultan that his majesty, the mob, did 
not approve of his administration. I mingled, like another 
Haroun Alraschid, under a Jew’s beard and gabardine, 
among those statesmen of the streets, with Achmet as my 
Giaffir. There is nothing equal to seeing the world for 
oneself. I got more knowledge of that great depository 
of sense and virtue, the open-air public, within a few 
hours of such perambulations, than I should have found in 
a million of years in a million of cabinets. The observa¬ 
tions of the ragged reprobates round me were incompara¬ 
bly sincere, if they were homely ; and 1 heard the merits 
of the ministry itself discussed with a straight-forward jus¬ 
tice, that it would have done them infinite good to hear. 


* Colonel, 




HEBE. 


J 65 - 


ii they had but the wisdom to understand. Rogue, fooli 
and robber, were the tenderest terms for those guardian 
angels of the empire ; and the sublime sultan had seldom 
more than the distinction of obtaining all the tittles to¬ 
gether. 

“ But in this world of taxes every man must expect t© 
pay tor his luxuries ; and why not the wits ? I marked 
down the liveliest critics, had them waiched into their huts, 
applied the bamboo vigorously to their soles, and stopped 
the overflow of political pleasantry in them (or the rest of 
their lives. For twelve months there was not more tire 
in Stamboul than would boil a cup of coffee ! 

“ But tilings were still going wrong in other quarters. 
The Russians had cut up horse and foot in three suces- 
sive battles; and even the Austrians had begun to stand 
the sight of aturban. Sefaskier* after seraskier had heen 
sent in vain, to bring the Czar and the emperor in chains 
together to lick the dust of the slipper of the most, invin¬ 
cible and most constantly beaten of soverigns. But the 
infidels laughed at us ; and, as it is the custom of tho5e 
barbarians to boast on all occasions, began to talk of the 
Sultan’s doing the same office for the boot-heel of the 
uncircumcised. 

u I alone saw how matters were to be mended. 

u We had been plagued for a century with projectors 
of all kinds, hut particularly with military; Frenchmen, 
Germans, Dutchmen and Italians, that, worthy of being 
corporals in their own services, had the infinite conde¬ 
scension to come and teach the moslemen. the sons of 
the mighty Mahmoud, the conquerors of Asia and Europe, 
the king-devourers, how to fight! 

u It was well for those coxcombs that friend Achmet 
and I were not the right and left hands of the sultan in 
their time. I always scoffed at this miserable quackery.” 

“Look af the Turk,” said l ; “ he is a lion : he roars, 
tears, and devours by nature. Chain him up with your dull 
discipline, and you might as well cut away his fangs and 
claws at once. You may make the heavy infidel, with 
the stick over his shoulders and the fear of it before hi§ 


* Commander-in-chief. 




166 


THE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


eyes, turn his eyes left and right like a puppet, and stand 
to be shot, like a fool as he is ; but you must let the Turk 
follow the jvay of his fathers, and fight, slay, and charge 
headlong. You may harness the ass ; and you may har¬ 
ness the lion too ; but you will never get him to draw.” 

“ My sentiments were, known. J was made seraskier ; 
and the very first rumour of my having put on my boots, 
cleared the country of the infidel drill sergeants. I sent 
the colours of the Nizam Djedid* to cover the coffee-house 
floors; made a present of the ‘ grand regulation’ books 
to the baths,.to be better employed in heating the water, 
than inflaming the brains of the people ; published a pro¬ 
clamation, threatening to hang the first reformer that pre¬ 
sumed to teach a Turk anything; and with the Green 
standard tossing before me galloped at tho iieai. of twenty 
thousand wild Asiatic cava’ry, as naked of tactics as they 
were of clothes, all the way to Bucharest. 

“There I found the yellow-beards! doing just as they 
liked with the conquerors of the world : the very day be¬ 
fore my arrival they had attacked our camp, broken it up 
like so much glass, am carried off our cannon, wagons, 
three pachas of three tails, and the seraskier. 

“ On my arrival, the enemy sent an impudent message, 
gravely proposing an exc iange of prisoners. I sent back 
for answer, that they were welcome to the dross of the 
earth that had fallen into our hands: that they were 
equally welcome to the slaves that had fallen into theirs ; 
and that I should fight tnem as soon as 1 bad taken my 
coffee.” 

u Bravo !” exclaimed the boyar, smiling ; u without, 
cannon, ammunition, or officers : a showy campaign you 
must expect to have made.” 

“ What good did they do to us when we had them ?” 
was the answer. t “We were beaten like camels, as long 
as we had, like them, our burden on our backs Throw' 
off his loading, and the camel runs at you and kicks. ] 
was an Asiatic, born under the sun of bright invention ; 
and I knew the superiority of a man of genius, and of 
blood warmed by the glorious climate of Asia, to the off 


* The new levies. 


t The Russians. 










HBBE. 


167 


spring of fogs and frost. When was the Arab brain 
ever beaten by the Scythian ? The whole army, though 
without a gun, with scarcely a cartridge, and not a shoe 
among the fifty thousand, shouted at my answer. They 
had at length got a general to their mind. 

“ I ordered an immediate distribution of pipes and 
pilaff: we had not another day’s supply within a hundred 
miles, unless we found it in the Russian camp. My next 
order was for the assemblage of all the superior officers 
in my tent. They came, Achmet was by my side. I 
read them a lecture on the duties of their profession ; told 
them that [ had provided a never-failing medicine for mili¬ 
tary deficiencies and thirdly, that they had all along be¬ 
haved like a drove of asses. In addition, I ordered every 
foot of them to be well bastinadoed on the spot. 

“ Achmet performed to admiration. I sent out my 
pupils mounted on their kindred asses to parade the lines, 
with a crier before each, informing the troops of his dis¬ 
ease and my remedy. The culprits were received with 
roars of laughters : justice never had a more unanimous 
triumph. I then broke them, and appointed the inferior 
officers of each in his place. Never was measure more 
popular. I next gave the signal for battle ; it was re¬ 
ceived with shouts ; and we all rushed forward like a mob. 

u And what can resist or has ever resisted a mob, that 
does not know what fear is? The enemy were in aston¬ 
ishment. When they expected to deal with squares and 
lines and deployments, and the other nonsense of the drill 
sergeants, they found themselves facing a torrent, they 
were surrounded by a living inundation ; they might as 
well have battled with the ocean, or the desert when it 
J rises before the whirlwind. Not a dozen cannon could 
be fired, before the janizaries were sabering the gunners : 
the whole affair was a riot. Generals, corporals, ensigns, 
i and drummers, the whole Muscovite army, were tossed 
I together, like chaff bouncing from the flail. 

“ Then came I with my spahis. We rolled on them 
I like a fallen mountain. They might as well have fought 
against a shower of rocks or thunderbolts. To do them 
! justice, none of the yellow-beards were fools enough 
to attempt any such thing. All who could run, ran full 




168 


THE WALLACHIAx’s TALE. 


speed. I never dreamed that there was so much activitv 
in Muscovite heels. 

“ In half an hour the affair was finished, and I was 
peaceably sitting in the Scythian field-marshal’s tent, 
washing down the infidel cookery with the infidel Tokay. 
Mahomet himself would have drunk wine on such an oc¬ 
casion ; for victory sanctifies all things in the field, just as 
power does every where else. Cannon, baggage, the 
military chest, and a cart-load of ribbons, stars, and 
badges of St. Arines and Wladimirs, were among our 
trophies. I sent the baubles to make my peace with the 
sultanas ; the baggage 1 gave to the troops ; the cannon 
I left where I found them ; and the military chest I kept 
for the most meritorious man in the service—the hero who 
taught the Ottoman how to conquer—the seraskier of 
seraskiers ! 

“ I followed up my blow ; and two battles more, to 
which a fight in the streets of Stamboul would have been 
regular and dangerous, tumbled the enemy head over heels 
across the frontier. The Scythians, from Moscow to the 
Pole, cried out for mercy, and swore that they had been 
betrayed by every body, troops, commissioners, generals, 
allies, and saints. I laughed at their diplomatists, and 
told them that they ‘ never fought better in their lives.’ 
They were in infinite luck that my dislike to drink marsh- 
water and lose my nose by frost, prevented our hunting 
them to the Neva, and eating our suppers in the winter 
palace of Catherine.” 

“ I remember,” said the boyar, “those extraordinary 
reverses of the Russian arms, which the populace attri¬ 
buted to witchcraft, and the politicians, who, in their w r ay, 
are generally about as wise as the populace, declared was 
the result of a profound scheme to expose Austria alone 
to the power of the Porte. But how is it that I find the 
great Mustapha here ?” 

“ Your politicians by trade are asses all over the world. 
They are always labouring at some nonsensical paradox, 
where the truth is as plain as this oar. I always scorned 
them;—thieves, who would rather open the door by a 
picklock than a key; moles that plunge under ground, 
End work their dull way in darkness, when they might walk 


1IEUE. 


V 


m 

Without trouble in the light. The whole affair of tire 
peace was, that I had taught the true believer the way to 
beat the infidel; and that the infidel was right glad to get 
out of the scrape as fast as he could. 

44 As to my being here, 1 will admit that it was wholly 
and solely my own absurd work. I fell, as every man 
will fall, who does his business top completely. If I had 
but half beaten the enemy, and left employment for a 
dozen campaigns, 1 should have remained master of the 
army. If l had but half tamed the beauties of the ha- 
ram, but half extinguished the heart-burnings and house- 
burnings of the city, and but half saved the throne, I 
should be at tills minute lord of the haram, the city, and 
the throne. But being clever, zealous, and successful 
overmuch, I left no room for fear ; and in the Ottoman 
court, at least, with fear out goes gratitude. The sultan 
Was jealous of my fame ; the ladies remembered the bam¬ 
boo ; and the populace, after the first week of peace, 
finding the want of something to quarrel about, would 
have had no objection to vary the scene by seeing mo 
bronzing on a spike over the gate of the seraglio. 

4i My doom was settled in a divan composed of men 
every one of whom 1 had myself raised from obscurity. 
It was voted, that there was no instance in the memory of 
the race of Omar of a seraskier having held his office 
after having completely beaten the enemy. 

44 My time was therefore come. I was invited on board 
the capitan pacha’s ship. The fellow had been my own bar¬ 
ber, whom I, for his dexterity in clipping my heard, had 
made an admiral. A pompous entertainment awaited the 
presence of the 4 great seraskier, his most magnificent 
I friend—the all but creator of the most faithful of servants.’ 
44 In the midst of the least I was seized * the pelisse was 
torn from my back by the individual hands of the 4 most 
faithful of servants I was thrown into a covered boat : 

I and being spared my life, as an instance of extraordinary 
m£rcy, was, after six months’ chains, turned loose to be<^- 
! borrow, or steal my bread through the world,” 

44 And then began your enjoyment,” said his listener, 

! who was struck by the eccentricity of this singular career, 
j Then began the life that one like you must have longed 
Vol. I.—15 



170 


THE IVALLACHIAn’s TALE. 


for. Adventure and variety of character lay before you. 
You of course fled from Turkey.” 

“ Not a step further than this bank. If gratitude is not 
the most thriving plant in Stamboul, I yet had gratitude 
once; for in my day of glory I appointed my bamboo- 
bearer pacha of Rudschuk. He had made my fortune, 
and I made his. The< pacha!ic was the most delicate post 
in the empire, and the most money-making. I knew that 
Achmet would keep down treason while there was virtue 
in the bastinado ; that he would squeeze out every possi¬ 
ble piastre ; and besides, that his sense of the art of 
thriving with the great would make him one of the very 
best receivers that could be appointed for the benefit of 
his protector the seraskier’s purse. 

“ I made the first use of my liberty to travel to him. 
He was not ungrateful neither ; for he offered me his own 
bamboo, and promised me the general flogging of the 
pachalic, if I would but take up his trade. He even 
offered to make me his pipe-carrier. But I had seen 
enough of the world to shrink from the confidence of the 
mighty. So I begged his permission to live by my own 
labour ; and, under the shadow of his arm, take no other 
trouble with mankind than tugging them backward and 
forward across the Danube. 

u Achmet was sagacious enough to see the wisdom of 
my choice : he is kind enough to let me demand what fare 
I will of the clay-brained slaves on the other side, without 
taking more than half of it for himself; and he undertakes 
to have every one who murmurs well bastinadoed. 

“ 1 have thus health, money, merriment, and a pillow, 
on which I may lay my head at night without caring a straw 
how the world goes before morning ; and what seraskier 
or sultan could ever say as much ? But here we are at the 
shore ; and now, remember that I am under the shadow 
of the pacha, and handsomely pay me my piastres.” 

The boyar jumped on shore, followed by the boatman, 
who led him through a variety of narrow passages in the 
suburbs to a gate in the rampart. u That swell of the 
river that carried me down beyond my time,” said Musta- 
pha, “ was of .more use than its merely giving you a long 
story ; for it will give you a bed in the town without the 


HEBE. 


171 


trouble of a public entry; There are secrets in all garri¬ 
sons, and one of the secrets of this is, that the gate before 
you leads under the rampart straight to the citadel, and 
that I keep the key. Between friends, I sometimes pass 
this way myself on matters of business with the pacha, 
which it is by no means necessary that the collectors of 
the sultan’s revenue should overhaul. Now, follow your 
fortunes : go straight to his highness, show him my scrib¬ 
bling, and when you are a true muslemin and pacha in his 
room, or turned into a king by the monarch-making 
Frenchman, remember your friend Mustapha, and raise 
the tolls of the ferry over the Danube.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

The Turks are notorious for their homage to Allah 
and his prophet; but the truth is, that the actual deity of 
the Ottoman is neither the one nor the other. It is alto¬ 
gether a domestic guide, and has from the beginning been 
the protector of infants and idiots, has made the. wisdom 
of fools, and now makes the providence of Turks. 

This universal protector is chance. The moslemin, 
guarded by this angel, walks with his pipe into the pow¬ 
der magazine ; goes to sea in a ship, from which the rats 
have been long terrified ; and eats, drinks, and is happy in 
the presence of the plague, the scaffold, and the enemy. 

The boyar walked through the most important town of 
the frontier without a question from human being ; marched 
into the citadel through a gate which had for years not 
known a hinge ; and until he reached the door of the 
pacha’s chambers, saw neither light nor sentinel. The 
gates of the fortres! had been shut, and that was enough. 
The fortress was under the special protection of the na¬ 
tional provioence ; and if it was not burned, blown up, or 
stormed, before morning, the guardian angel was looked 
upon as doing his duty satisfactorily. 

But, at the door of the residence, another system was 






J72 


TIIE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


evidently in force. At tlie first knock, the boyar was sur¬ 
rounded by a crowd of armed men, who rushed out from 
the darkness ; was dragged in without being suffered to 
utter a word ; and, to his astonishment, and in some de¬ 
gree to his alarm, was finally placed in a solitary dungeon¬ 
like room, in whose door-way stood a janizary, sword in 
hand. 

For some period the silence was unbroken ; but at 
length the sounds of mirth, and the buzz of many voices, 
told him that at least the serai* was awake. The mirth 
rapidly increased, and in the opening of distant doors, he 
heard fragments of music, followed by loud laughter and 
applause. 

Night wore away, and the boyar’s eyes were heavy with 
bis fatigue, when the janizary ordered him to rise and go 
before him. A passage of absolute darkness, and appa¬ 
rently covered with the ruins of building, led him to a 
curtained door. It was thrown open, and he entered a 

small room furnished with oriental magnificence. A short 

- 

thick figure, wrapt in shawls, was lying on a sofa. The 
boyar paused : the figure spoke, and the first words in¬ 
formed him, that he was in the presence of the pacha, and 
that the representative of the sublime sultan was very nearly 
intoxicated. 

Afier a rambling interrogatory of absurdities, bis under¬ 
standing seemed to revive. “ What news of the dia¬ 
monds ?” lisped out the pacha. The boyar professed bis 
total ignorance. 

The pacha started from the sofa in a fury. “ Why, in 
the name of Zatanaij—where is the use of their always 
sending me such blockheads ? So, the money is thrown 
away that took you to St. Petersburg. The diamonds 
are thrown away. The time is thrown away. You a spy ! 
You have not brains enough for a mufti: they ought to 
make you a minister, to keep the rest of the divan in coun¬ 
tenance. Fool! 1 know that the Ru^ians are fitting out 
a fleet in the black Sea, and you shall answer to me with 
your head for not bringing the plan of the expedition. You 
had diamonds enough to have bought the consciences of 


* Palace. 


■j Satan, 


173 


IIEBE. 

V ^ V 

half St. Petersburg. By my three tails, you shall figure 
on the ramparts to-morrow for this. If the admirals and 
ministers refused your bribes, for the first time since the 
Hegira, why not offer them to their wives ? The business 
would have been done. You would have had the whole 
story ; I should have had the intelligence to send to the 
divan ; and the Russians would have been burned in their 
own harbours. But now, there is nothing for it all but impal¬ 
ing you, a kafir, a slave, a fellow who. is probuibiy a double 
spy, a dog of an infidel, unworthy to have licked up the 
dust of the slipper of the faithful.” 

Cantacuzene wisely abandoned the hope of explanation 
in the .present state of the functionary’s faculties. But, 
disdaining the honours ot a spy, he put the boatman’s billet 
into the pacha’s hand. 

A glazed eye wandered over the writing, and Oantacu- 
' zene discovered that, however the art of reading might he 
among the pacha’s attainments, it was not the privilege of 
his hours of festivity. The Turk turned it over and over ; 
but he could make nothing of the communication. Egypt 
had not a darker hieroglyphic to him. Yet the name of 
Mustapha conveyed some feeling of respect, which in¬ 
duced him to think the mysterious paper worth deciphering 
before he sent its bearer from his presence to the axe. 

He clapped bis hands, and a veiled female advanced 
from an adjoining apartment. Even rapidly as the door 
was shut, a long vista of tables covered with wine and other 
materials of forbidden feasting, was visible within. “ Read 
this paper, and tell me what Mustapha means,” was the 
command. The slave took it, glanced her eye over the 
boyar, and holding the paper at arms’ length, uttered a 
loud cry. u Far he such ietters from my lord the pacha,” 
exclaimed she, with a gesture of abhorrence. “ Accursed 
be the hand that wrote it, and the hand that brought it 
here. There is poison in its folds. Let my lord, but at 
a safe distance, smell its deadly perfume. Those are the 
Ciiristian arts by which they slay the mighty, from whose 
faces they would fly as the antelope from the hunter.” 

She advanced the paper V nrds the pacha : an actual 

13* 





174 


THE WALLAOIIIAK’s TALE. 


perfume filled the apartment, and the alarmed functionary 
was more than satisfied with the proof. 

u Aye,” said he, “ many a brave man has died of a pair 
of Italian gloves before now. But Achniet is too wise to 
be entrapped. The fellow is an assassin, sent very likely 
from the Sublime Porte to save the capidgi bashi* the 
trouble of his journey.” 

14 1 scorn the baseness of the imputation,” exclaimed 
the boyar. 44 J am a subject of the llospodar. I demand 
to be set at liberty.” 

44 Aye, aye, a Russian spy. Those Wallachian bravoes 
all learn the same song. The Hospodar would be glad to 
have Rudgchuk, which he can never have while the invin¬ 
cible Achmet Pacha wears a scimitar.” 

“ Pacha, you deceive yourself. The note is harmless ; 
or, whatever it may be, it is the writing of your friend 
Mustapha.” 

44 Slave, was there ever secretary or seraskier turned 
out, who would not get back again if he could, or care 
how he got back again ? Rudschuk would be a good 
beginning for Mustapha ; and my head would be a first- 
rate compliment to the divan. But you are guilty. It is 
too late to impale you to-night, and I am sleepy ; but by 
day break vou look your last upon the Danube.” 

Cantacuzene disdained further reasoning with the grim 
debauchee ; and hut little time was left him, if he had 
been inclined to argument. A wave of the pacha’s hand 
was enough for iiis seizure by a crowd of janizaries, who 
swept him away through an alternate succession of melan¬ 
choly and superb apartments to a dungeon. 

There, alone, thwarted in all his objects, anxious for 
the fate of those whom he had left behind, perplexed by 
the imputations that must be thrown on a high officer of 
state absent at this stirring period, and conscious that in 
the hands of the barbarian pacha his life might be instantly- 
sacrificed to the caprice of drunkenness, suspicion, or 
mere love of blood, he spent some hours of bitterness. 

But his was not a mind to sink under misfortune.. In 
the darkness of his dungeon he recovered his equanimity. 


* The messenger of the bow string. 


HEBE. 


113 


He reviewed his conduct, and calmlv convinced himself 
that there was nothing 1 in it which should humiliate him 
in his own esteem. He had encountered hazard for a 
purpose of honour and humanity If it were to be en¬ 
countered again for the same purposes, he would be 
equally ready 

“ JVly life may be extinguished,” thought lie; “but, 
after all, what can man do but by permission ? If my 
lime is come ; if a sparrow does not fall to the ground 
unnoted, it is virtue to submit to a decision, in all things 
benevolent, and in all things wise. If I leave those behind 
whom I love, I leave them in hands to w hich human good¬ 
ness and power are as the drop in the ocean ; and whose 
will that human guardianship should cease, is hut a change 
for one more secure. Let me be grateful that my career 
is to close, not in the midst of Worldly folly or personal 
crime, not in some hot pursuit of human temptations, in 
the guilt of avarice, ambition, or revenge . but in an act 
of obedience to the great command, that we should do 
good to all.” 

In such contemplations he smiled at the human pangs 
that had smote him in the pacha’s words of death ; sent 
up an aspiration lor the safety and happiness of those 
whom he might never see more ; and, laying himself 
down on the pavement, with r.o covering but his cloak, 
fell into a slumber undisturbed by even a dream. 

After some hours he felt himself roused, and saw a 
young moslemin standing before him, with a lamp, whose 
light strongly falling on his eyes, almost concealed the 
face and figure of its bearer. The gray light of morning 
was just beginning to glimmer through the upper bars of 
the loop-holes ; and Cantacuzene, conceiving that the 
time for his death was come, started up, declaring that he 
was ready. 

“ Stop,” said the moslemin ; “ there is an act of justice 
to be done first. Would you die with a sin upon your 
soul, and a stain upon your honour ? Your son, Con¬ 
stantine-” * 

“ What of him ? tell me at once!” exclaimed the boyar, 
14 or lead me to the scaffold.” The recollection of the 
scene in which his rash and passionate son was charged 





THE WALLACHIAH’S TALE. 


I7G 

with the death of Theodore, struck cold upon him ; and 
with increased impatience he demanded the stranger’s 
purpose. 

u Your son,” was the answer, u had plighted his faith 
to a woman every way his superior but in rank. He 
abandoned her. in his vanity and fickleness, he persuaded 
himself that he loved another. Passion was at length 
exchanged for revenge. Baffled in his pursuit by one 
who watched his steps with the eve of insulted love, he 
committed a great crime, and tied his country.” 

The boyar groaned at this confirmation of his worst 
fears. “ His wife,” said the moslemin— u his betrothed 
in the face of earth and heaven, followed him across the 
Christian frontier, as she would have followed him to 
the extremity of the earth. She is now within this fortress, 
and has sent me to give freedom to the noble father of 
her cruel and guilty lord.” 

The boyar, like another David, was crushed by the 
conviction of his son’s crime. u Would to Heaven I had 
died for thee, my son!” was in his heart. But, after a 
silent struggle, he mastered his feelings, and demanded, 
if he was to be thus set at liberty, why a Wallachian noble 
had been thus ignominiously treated, and an innocent man 
put in hazard of his life ? 

u In this dungeon was your security,” answered the 
moslemin. “ If Achmet had, instead of this insult, seated 
you at his table, you would have fallen into the hands of 
a vengeance still more fearful. Strange things will be 
done here before even the sun is up. Suspicion has 
fastened on the pacha ; and the Christian, whom he 
honoured with his fatal hospitality, would have perished 
with his entertainer. It was known that the capidgi bashi 
was on his way, that a correspondence with the Muscovite 
bad been intercepted, and that the fall of the treacherous 
and sensual wretch who has too long governed this un¬ 
happy province, was doomed. You remember the sup¬ 
posed poisoning of the billet ? Those things are common 
among us. A flower, a shawl, a ring, or a fragment of 
paper, is often the conveyancer of death. The perfume 
goes through a thousand hands harmlessly ; but where the 
spell is pointed, there the venom strikes like an arrow. So 


HEBE. 


177 


a ians the tale in this land of charms. The pacha’s senses 
were in a state to believe it, and you were saved from his 
disastrous hospitality. By sunrise Achmet will be no more; 
the black mantle will be laid upon his shoulder; the sen¬ 
tence of the blood, drinker will be on him ; the bowstring 
wih go through the serai. Every minister of his crimes 
and pleasures, every confidant of his designs, even human 
being unfortunate enough to be marked by his favour, will 
perish. Then chains will he the badge of honour. The 
only safety will he to those whom the messenger of ven¬ 
geance finds already in the dungeon.” 

“ Was it then an act of friendship that threw me here?” 
said the doubting boyar, as be glanced on the stony bed 
and the bare walls. 

“’An act of the most zealous friendship. But it depends 
upon yourself’ alone to make that act effective. Nay, 
even to raise the boyar Oantacuzene not simply beyond 
hazard, hut to the highest place of fbrtime.” 

“ I desire v liberty, and leave the thirst of power to those 
who know no better.” 

“ Yet power is a natural passion, and a noble one. In 
the guijtv and the selfish it may take the colour of the 
mind, and he a crime ; hut power m the possession of 
the generous and the lofty is only a larger means of public 
good.” 

The moslenrin approached (he prisoner, and in a more 
decided tone said, “ !t may he within the influence of the 
individual who nou speaks to you. to fulfil the highest 
aspirations of your heart. You are patriotic and high- 
spirited. 1 know you well. You lament the slavery of 
Greece.” 

The moslemin paused. The boyar listened with deep 
attention. The subject was an anxious one with him, 
and its simple sound awoke every chord in his bosom. 

u Boyar, you are too honourable to deny this, and too 
manly to shrink from the great, cause w hen it shall demand 
your aid. Do you doubt my words, my will, or my 
knowledge of yours ? Look at this pledge.” A highly 
ornamented dagger glittered before the boyar’s eye ; it 
was the weapon that he had given as his parting present 
to Rhiga. The disastrous fate of his friend rose on his 


% 


/ 







i7a 


THE WALLACHIAN'S TALE. 


recollection, and he gloomily demanded, “ By what means 
that relic of a great and unfortunate man had fallen into 
moslem hands.” 

u And do you still think me a moslemin ?” loftily ex¬ 
claimed the stranger. fcw If I were one, would you find 
me here, hazarding my life to save yours ? No, I should 
be riding at the head of the janizaries that are now on 
their march to do vengeance on this spot ; or I should be 
intriguing at the Porte for the forfeited honours of the 
pacha. Have you never seen me before ?” 

The boyar fixed his eyes on the stranger’s countenance, 
and was struck by its first likeness to some one that he 
had known ; but the longer he looked, the more the like¬ 
ness faded. The colour was of the deepest Arabian 
tinge ; and the vivid and penetrating features were Hot 
less Arabian. He acknowledged himself baffled ; and. 
saying k ‘' that he must learn who he was from his own 
lips,” demanded if there was any hope of being set free. 

u There is one condition, and but one. Your son has 
loved and been beloved.—Give your consent to his mar¬ 
riage. He waits only for your sanction. Write your 
name upon this paper, and in the next moment you are free.” 

The paper was laid before him ; and the boyar found 
that his signature was to be affixed to a contract of mar¬ 
riage between Constantine and the Italian singer who had 
excited so much attention at Bucharest. Cantacuzene’s 
enduring spirit had its limits of endurance, and here they 
were reached. The pride of rank might have given way ; 
but it was not on such terms that, the life of the descendant 
of a line of emperors was to be purchased, and he tore the 
paper. The stranger sprang forward with a wild cry, and 
Cantacuzene saw the poniard unsheathed in his hand. 
He was unprepared, and received a slight wound as he 
rose to defend himself. But while he was still attempting 
to wrest the weapon from his furious assailant, a burst of 
light flashed across the cell, instantly followed by a heavy- 
volley of musketry. The stranger started back at the 
sound, and dropping the poniard, fled, leaving the door of 
the cell open. ' , 


HEBE. 


170 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Whether this were the path to liberation or not, the 
boyar determined to try his chance, and, if he were only 
plunging into more immediate peril, at least not perish by 
famine and in the disgrace of a dumreon. 

As he passed along the intricate and neglected passages 
that led from time to time within view of the ramparts and 
city, he. saw that a desperate conflict was going on in the 
trufe confusion of a Turkish fight. Horse, foot, and popu¬ 
lace, were all entangled, and rolling backward and forward 
through the streets and fortifications in furious masses ; 
whiit the cannon of the ramparts we e firing down on the 
streets, and sweeping away friend and toe together. 

The battle had already continued for some hours, and 
the fire vvas slackening on both sides, when the trampling 
of a large body of cavalry across the drawbridge of the 
citadel, and the Albanian cries, caught the boyar’s ear. 
The mere possibility that Constantine was engaged in this 
ferocious assault w ould not suffer him to remain any longer 
in his obscure spot of safety. He tore open a door that 
stood across the passage ; found himself in the base of 
one of the towers of the serai; forced his way through a 
- quantity of chests, apparently of treasure, of which the 
tower had beer) long said to be the depository—the store¬ 
house of Achmet’s extortion ; and, directed bv the sudden 
roar of the combat, toiled through utter darkness into a 
chamber curtained and cushioned with oriental luxury. 

The battle was evidently concentred round the tower, 
either as the place of the treasure, or as the probable refuge 
of the pacha. But Cantacuzene had but one feeling. He 
climbed up to one of the high windows, and from it had 
a view of this hideous struggle. Achmet’s janizaries still 
fought desperately for a master who had indulged them in 
so long a license of plunder ; and the populace, who hated 
both parties alike, were yet driven to fight by the fury that 
fires men’s blood in times of civil discord. From the 





ISO THE WAfcLACHIAJt’s TALE. 

narrowness of the streets, the fire from the ramparts, heavy 
as it was, produced little other effect than tearing away the 
parapets and roofs of houses, which it flung upon the com¬ 
batants below. But where the fire fell upon the more open 
spaces, market, bazaar, or field, the heaps of dead showed 
the formidable hazards of coming within its range. But 
the crisis was come. The sound of their trumpets, still 
less than the fright and flight of the armed populace, told 
the coming of the Albanian cavalry. They carne in a 
solid mass at full gallop, and trampling every thing before 
them. The avenues round the tower were instantly 
cleared ; and for a while Achmet’s janiz .ries were to be 
seen only flying through the outworks, or throwing down 
their arms. The cavalry rode up shouting, and waving 
their scirltitars in their usual mode of exultation after a 
successful charge ; and the affair seemed to be decided. 

But thev had to deal with a subtle eneinv, who was now 
playing bis last stake for life. Aehmet bad drawn them 
under the guns of the tower, and waited only until the field 
at its foot, was full. At the settled signal, a shot fired from 
his own carbine, the artillery poured down upon the vic¬ 
tors. Nothing could be more tremendous than the havoc 
of this shower of iron on the exposed mass of the cavalry. 
Man and horse were flung over each other, tossed up into 
the air, or dashed in quivering fragments against the walls ; 
the whole was a howling and struggling heap of massacre. 
In the midst of the confusion, the boyar’s eyes were wildly 
fixed on one object—his son Constantine, whom, to his 
terror, he saw under the hottest fire making desperate 
efforts to restore the battle ; plunging through the dying 
and the dead, and with voice and scimitar forcing his 
troopers back to the charge. He at length succeeded iii 
collecting some hundreds, in whose front he came gallop¬ 
ing to attack the remnant of the janizaries, who, shut out 
from the tower by the sudden closing of the gates, con¬ 
tinued firing in little groups below. Another charge must 
have cut them off; but while the squadrot^s were in the 
act of wheeling round the bastion, Cantacuzene in 
agony saw his son’s head droop to the saddle, arid at the 
same instant his charger receive a ball in the breast, which 
turned him round. The janizaries gave a wild shout fc>¥ 


1IEM. 


in 

*he fall of the leader, and poured in another discharge. 
The boyar saw the gallant rider fall, and the squadrons, 
in the heat of the charge, rush over the spot. The light 
forsook his eyes ; he lost his hold of the bars, and dropped 
insensible into the chamber. 

When he recovered, all was changed round him. The 
pavilion that he had but just seen the seat of oriental 
luxury, covered with the richest caprices of despotic 
wealth and indulgence, was filled with the wrecks of battle. 
In the general retreat Achrnet’s guaid had taken the 
direction of the tower, forced the doors, and were now 
preparing to make in it their final stand. The pacha’s pre¬ 
cious chamber, T which the stories told by the rambling 
bards of Bulgaria were scarcely beyond the truth, for either 
its richness, its seclusion, or its crimes,—this place of cost¬ 
liness and mystery was now crowded with armed barba¬ 
rians. The floors and sofas were covered with objects of 
horrid mutilation, raging, groaning, and dying ; the lamps, 
urns of lighted perfumes, and marble tables, every thing, 
were overturned ; the embroidered carpets and curtains, 
torn up into stripes to staunch the dreadful gashes of the 
Albanian scimitar ; the gfded and arabesque pedestals 
piled into buttresses for the doors, or stands for the janiza¬ 
ries to fire down from ; the painted windows, the chefs 
d'ceuvre of the first artists of Vienna, dashed into frag¬ 
ments to make room for the musket and carbine muzzles 
that still poured an obstinate fire on the heads of the as¬ 
sailants. The air was thick and deadly with the mingling 
smells of luxury and carnage, the spilled^attar, and incense 
flaming as it lay on the ground, the gunpowder smoke, and 
vapour of the turbans and clothes of the dead burning 
from the fallen urns and wadding of the musketry. 

The boyar, stifling and exhausted, lay among a pile of 
dead, and scarcely wishing to survive them. He heard 
every outcry and change of the struggle, and listened almost 
with a wish that uncertainty should be at an end, and some 
friendly ball relieve him of the burden of an existence thal 
was beginning to be too heavy to be borne. 

A tenfold yell of battle roused him from his torpor. Yet 
through the whole uproar one shrill Voice was heard 
screaming out in every phrase of fury. The clash of arms 
Yol, I.—- 16 




iB2 


THE WALLAOIIIATJ’S TALE. 


came nearer and nearer still, and at length the buttresses 
burst away from the door, and in the arms of a crowd of 
janizaries was Achmet borne in, desperately wounded. 

He had been dragged from under the feet of the cavalry, 
and was now brought in only to die. His turban was oft’; 
he was nearly naked ; and the blood flowing down his front 
from a deep scimitar-cut in the forehead mr.de him a dread¬ 
ful spectacle. The janizaries laid him on a sofa, and 
attempt • 1 to bind up his wounds. . Hut life was strong in 
his little nervous frame. At the first volley lie bounded 
up, and tearing his way through the crowd, insisted on be¬ 
ing suffered to rush out among the enemy, llis brain was 
palpably disordered by the torture of his wounds, and he 
danced, roared with laughter, and poured out perpetual 
execrations on every thing and every body. He kicked 
the dead from him as sluggards, and dashed his pistols at 
the heads of the janizaries when they attempted to hold 
him. y ' 

But all was soon to be over. A cannon-shot tore down 
the veranda of the chamber, and a large portion of the 
wall gave way along with it. Below were seen a swarm 
of troops, who, after some desultory firing, rushed up the 
ruins to storm the last stronghold of the devoted pacha. 
He still continued bounding, whirling his scimitar, and 
screaming out execrations of all kinds against rebels, 
traitors, and the “ blackest of all traitors, the divan. 5 ' But 
his adherents, crowded together, offered a fatal mark to the 
fire, and they fell thick at his side. Wound upon wound 
could not extinguish the fiery spirit of Achmet. He 
danced, howled, and threatened only the more with every 
shot that covered him with the blood of his troops or his 
own. 

The assailants still had a difficult task, and many an Al¬ 
banian fell under the carbine and Damascus blade before 
the ruins were mastered. But they were mastered at last. 
Scarcely more than thirty or forty mutilated wretches sur¬ 
vived within the chamber to meet the assault. Achmet 
had hope to the end, and calling on them to follow, rushed 
forward, and bonnded down the steep into the centre of , 
the enemy. Every thing was overturned before this des¬ 
perate leap for the moment; and with his scimitar flash- 


HEBB. 


183 


fng in perpetual circles round his head, he made a long 
passage through the multitude ; but they gradually closed 
round him. The bayonet and dagger did what the bullet 
had failed to do. He was crimson from head to foot, and 
with a howl that was heard above the thousand outcries 
of the conflict, he fell. 

A crowd fell over him, and he was long seen struggling 
and stabbing. When his scimitar was broken, he fought 
with his dagger ; when the dagger was torn away, he 
fought with his hands and teeth. He died like a wild-cat, 
tearing, screaming, and untameable. 

Sunset saw the old pacha buried, the new 7 pacha en¬ 
throned, a new court, a new garrisor^—the whole change 
of power complete, and the capidgi bashi tranquilly riding 
out from the Turkish gate of Rudschuk at the head of a 
long train of state-prisoners, among whom was the boyar 
Cantacuzene. 

The transactions of the morning were common in the 
history of the Porte. Achmet had been for some time 
justly' suspected of a correspondence with that northern 
enemy, which the Turk feels by instinct to be the future 
master of his throne. The mandate of the sultan, secret 
as the pestilence thatflyeth by night, went forth. But the 
pacha, partly forew arned, and partly contemptuous ol the 
proceedings of the divan, had laid his measures tor the re¬ 
turn of the capidgi bashi’s head to the Porte instead of his 
own. The result was an open struggle, in which he 
would have made good his determination, but for the 
activity of the capidgi’s piastres in the course of the night. 
A large portion of the garrison revolted at the critical 
moment, and Achmet was driven from point to point until 
resistance was finished by his fall. 

The boyar, found loose, and in the final stronghold of 
the rebel, w 7 as of course reckoned among his adherents. 
His being recognised as the minister of the Hospodar 
Saved him from the general execution ; while his rank, 
and the probability of his making important discoveries, 
rendered him a prize worthy of figuring at the Porte as the 
first-fruits of the new pacha’s sovereignty. His entreaties 
to be suffered to look for the body of his son were scoffed 
at: he was ordered to set out instantly ; and in the midst 


m 


THE WALLACIIIAN’s TALE. 


of a troop of spahis, he was conveyed far from the land 
which contained every thing dear to his heart and his 
honour. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

t 

The absence of the boyar from Bucharest was for some- 
days tak<*n as a matter of office, in the anxiety of a time 
which required frequent private missions to the European 
Courts. But the intelligence of Achmet’s fall embarrassed 
the Hospodar, as the menace of a change in the Turkish 
polity , and the porter bashi was accordingly summoned 
to the council, as the depositary of the loreign correspond¬ 
ence. He was nowhere to be found. 

Among the unsettled governments of semi-barbarian 
stales, treachery is the first solution of every difficulty ; 
and even the prou integrity of Cantaeuzcne’s private life 
did not exempt him from the charge, so seemingly sanc¬ 
tioned bv an absence without the knowledge of his sove¬ 
reign. Justice is rapid in the court of a despot. The 
boyar’s palace*was searched. No document explaining 
his flight was discoverable. This was enough for the 
irritable Suspicion of the Asiatic government of VV allachia, 
and a whisper from the court was enough for the capital. 

A thousand mouths were instantly opened upon the 
reputation of a noble whom, a few days before, all identi¬ 
fied.with Roman virtue ; and his fortune, his rank, and his 
high office, were severally crimes in the eyes ot the crowd 
of faithless and empty iffiers. who thought only ot the par¬ 
tition of the prize Rumours, brought by some ti itives 
from the slaughter of Rudschuk, gave form to the general 
suspicion ; and when it was declared that he had been 
seen to cross the Danube, and even to enter the roof of 
Achmet, whose name it was, since his fall, the eager ob¬ 
ject of the government to disown, the sentence was delayed 
no longer. 

The boyar’s palace was entered by a detachment of 
soldiery. Seals were put upon his papers ; his household 



HEBE. 


125 


driven out; and the last proof of timid zeal was given in 
proclaiming a reward for any man who should bring in the 
traitor, dead or alive. 

Hebe’s consternation was indescribable. Desertion, 
shame, and beggary, stared her in the face : she was sur¬ 
rounded by a crowd of domestics, some feeble and la¬ 
menting the common probability of their being involved 
in the punishment of their master ; some faithless, and 
taking the opportunity of the general confusion to plunder 
every thing that they could lay (heir hands on ; others 
insolent or perfidious, and threatening to secure them¬ 
selves by bringing to the government details of every 
trivial transaction which they could exaggerate into public 
danger. 

Under the first effect of the blow, the young Greek 
was stunned. She wandered through the palace, tossing 
her hands in wild despair, weepings, and talking to va~ 
eancy. Suspicion of the boyar’s honour never entered 
her thought; and the loss of wealth and protection was 
as far from her regrets as ever. But she was convinced 
that some dreadful misfortune had happened to the noblest 
and most generous of. men ; and her sorrow derived its 
last aggravation from the incontrollable feeling that his 
absence, bis ruin, nay, perhaps his deaih, were in some 
way or other connected with his zeal in her cause. 

But this debility of spirit was brief. The very weight 
of her perplexities stirred her powerful mind to an efforf 
of vigour. Her eyes w 7 ere resolutely cleared ; her dress 
was composed ; she summoned the domestics to their at¬ 
tendance ; and with a train worthy of her rank, and a 
heart that might have done honour to the loftiest sufferer 
of adversity, she went to demand an audience of the chief 
minister of the Hospodar. 

The heroic struggle with misfortune is sure to make 
friends among the feeling and the honourable. The tale 
of the boyar’s ruin had made its way even among the 
populace ; but when they saw this young and delicate 
being coming forth from the palace marked for downfall, 
and coming with the air of majestic innocence, and with 
the old pomp of the boyar's attendance, they shouted in 
admiration, ' .v 

16 * ’ 





i86 TIIE WALLACHIAN'S TALE. 

Her reception by the minister was such as became a 
noble to offer to a woman of rank and beauty claiming 
justice. But his high-bred attentions were turned into 
homage to her understanding, as she detailed the proba¬ 
bilities that might account for the boyar’s absence. With 
the eloo^ent force of feeling and of reason, she demanded 
that the unimpeached honour of a life spent in the face of 
the world, should not be suffered to perish by a suspicion 
which the accused was not present to clear away. She 
adverted to the utter impossibility that a character distin¬ 
guished for love of country, for contempt of wealth, and 
for an attachment to the purity and peace of private life, 
should be so instantly changed into that of a traitor, be¬ 
traying his country, his honour, and his religion, for any 
bribe that the Turk or the earth could hold out to him in 
opulence or ambition. 

She stated with irrestrainable tears the .chance that 
some filial accident might have closed the days of her 
adopted father : the passions of revenge, of plunder, of 
envy at his distinction ; the fierce selfishness that might 
look upon his fall as essential to its own rise ;—all were 
still busy among mankind, and were peculiarly and fatally 
active iri the corrupted circles of the native noblesse. 
And from those what innocence, unsuspicious of offence ; 
what courage, scorning perfidy ; or what honour, guile¬ 
less of the arts and malignity of meaner spirits, could be a 
perpetual guard ?” 

u I demand,” said the young and ardent advocate, 
u that the order of his highness the Ilospodar be instantly 
revoked ; that all proceedings against the name and for¬ 
tune of my lord and father be stayed ; and that time be 
given for his friends to defend his cause ; or for himself, 
which may Heaven in its mercy grant, to return in person, 
to put his enemies to shame, and be the asserter of his 
own pure and imperishable honour.” 

The common official dexterity of denial was not to be 
practised upon such a claimant. To the language of 
diplomacy she replied by the language of nature. The 
minister’s prepossessions gradually gave way ; and ac¬ 
knowledging in more than the phrase of courts, the united 
powers of so much generous interest and so much reason, 


HEBE, 


187 


iie came to the only requisite, the time for the boyar*# 
return. To this he demanded a limit. Hebe’s protesta* 
tions were here in vain. The minister was inflexible. 

It was finally agreed that for three months the hand oc 
the state should be withheld, and that the boyar’s property 
and name should be untouched, until certain intelligence 
should arrive, or until the fatal term was closed. 

A triumph had thus far been achieved, but it was still 
a melancholy one ; and Hebe, after the first exultation, 
wept many a bitter hour in the solitude of those stately 
halls that she had preserved to her benefactor. But if 
she could have found happiness in public applause, her 
sorrows might have speedily passed away. Her daringto 
stand forth against a mandate which the proudest of the 
princes of the land so seldom thought of questioning ; a 
daughter? too, in the cause of a father ; and that daughter, 
the offspring of adversity, undertaking this high duty 
at an age when others were scarcely capable of more 
than the tasks and thoughts of childhood ; won the heart 
of the city. 

Shouts from the populace ; congratulations fronrtheir 
superiors ; the respect of her own sex, proud of having 
such a representative of the faith and generous self-sacri¬ 
fice that make their especial throne in the heart of 
tvoman ; even the consideration of the court, made the 
young Greek the most conspicuous among all the popular, 
the fair, and the noble of the realm. 

But her soul was too deeply engrossed with one thought 
to find room for the delights of human applause. Until 
the fate of Cantacuzene was determined, every moment 
must be one of effort and anxiety. The idea that he 
could have betrayed his country, she scorned to entertain. 
Her knowledge of his habits of pure and pious thought, 
his unostentatious sincerity, and his solemn and reasoning 
convictions of those hallowed truths which the world so 
often idly overlooks, or madly disdains, saved her from 
the bitterness of a pang which she would have been 
scarcely able to bear. -It did more ;—it strengthened her 
spirit against the repeated disappointments that she was 
forced to experience in her search for Cantacuzene. 

Day by day her messengers, despatched to all parts of 





I 88 THE wallachian’s tale. 

the provinces, even to the Turkish territories, and the 
chief towns of Greece and Asia Minor, returned without 
information. Constantinople had been searched in vain. 
Money ; the generous zeal of many among the nobles ; 
the sympathy of the opulent traders from Smyrna and 
Salonica, who offered their services to obtain intelligence ; 
and even the active interest of the minister, who saw with 
regret the approach of the time when hope must be at an 
end, were utterly fruitless. Yet in the lonely evenings of 
those days of pain, when she had watched duringthe day 
for the arrival of a courier, whose coming buoyed up her 
heart with sudden hope only to cast it down deeper than 
over, she found, in the memory of the boyar’s virtues, a 
consolation that the world could never give. 

u My more than father,” she would say, as her eyes 
turned from the darkening earth to heaven, my earthly 
guide and protector, teacher of all that lifts the heart to 
hope and virtue; let what will come, I will believe that 
the hand of a mightier strength than of man is on your 
sacred head. If you have perished, it is for such as von 
that happiness is reserved where the weary are at rest, 
where the exalted spirit feels itself placed at last in the 
distinction to which it was born, and rejoices at the 
trials here which have raised it beyond sorrow for ever. 
My father, if the dead are allowed to think of mortal feel¬ 
ings, is it presumptuous to think that the spirits of those 
whom we loved may stoop from their joy to guide and 
soothe the desolate on earth ? May not a portion of the 
happiness of their immortality be, in looking upon the 
efforts of the living to follow their paths, or in their own 
power to guard and console ? At this hour may not my 
father he near his child, her heart be open to him as it was 
on earth, and his unwearied love be commissioned by the 
King of quick and dead to protect her steps through a 
thorny world ?” \ 

But the fated time was flying ; no tidings came ; and 
another month must extinguish the hope of seeing the 
boyar restored to his place in the public mind. Con¬ 
fiscation must follow : for her own poverty she had not a 
thought, but her heart sickened at the ruin which mus 
fall upon the many who looked up to the bounty of Canta- 


HEBE. 


H8& 

euzene. Farewell then to the plans of improvement; to 
the neat cottage and cultivated field of the peasant; t© 
the place of education ; to the shelter for the helpless 
and the aged ;—all must perish ! The garden and grove 
must be a wilderness; the smiling landscape be turned 
into sterility ; the peasantry be driven into the extremes 
of barbarism and poverty ; tiie labour of a life of wisdom 
and benevolence be wasted in a day by the rapacity of 
some indolent and worthless reveller in the general plunder 
of the boyar’s possessions. 

Yet what was to be done ? The popular interest had 
perished as rapidly as it rose. A new troop of dancers, 
and a fete, tor which the fire-works were to come from 
Vienna, had absorbed the head and heart of every living 
creatui e in Bucharest ; and the world thought no more of 
the object of its recent admiration than of the dead. 

Heue felt herself gradually sinking under this perpetual 
fatigue of mind. 'The misery of hope deferred—the sick¬ 
ness o! the heart was heavy on her. Sleep had vanished 
from her eyelids. She spent the nights gazing from her 
window on that southern horizon where her father’s last 
steps had been turned. She became the prey of visionary 
agitations Every foot startied her ; every sound from 
the huge city by night told her beating heart some new 
tidings of sorrow JBut she had quickly more substantial 
grounds for,disquietude. 

Forgotten as she was by the multitude, she was not for¬ 
gotten by all. The habits of her retired life encouraged 
the presumptuous approaches of those who saw in it only 
general destitution. Letters of an insulting kind, atten¬ 
tions that even her innocence could not misconceive, and 
tamperings with her domestics, convinced her that her 
situation was one of peril. She had but one resource ; 
to fiy to the minister, and implore his safeguard. 

But here again she trembled. He was young, hand¬ 
some; and unmarried. His language to her even in the 
moment of her distress was touched with feelings from 
which, respectful as they were, she instinctively shrank. 
He bad since solicited opportunities of recominending- 
himself to her by the most graceful and zealous services. 
Woman, always powerful over the generous and accom- 


130 


THE WALLACHIAN’3 TALE. 


plished mind, is invested with double power when hex* 
genius is guided by her heart. Hebe’s pleadings for her 
father, less adorned by the glowing lip and brilliant eye 
of her who uttered them, than by the hallowed ardour ot 
her filial love, had sunk deep into his memory. He had at 
length offered her his alliance ; and a word from the 
young Greek would have placed her at the head of the 
haughty nobility of Wallachia. 

But that word she would have died rather than pro¬ 
nounce ; for one recollection was enshrined in her soul. 
Theodore had perished on earth, but there he lived. She 
conversed with him during the hours of her solitude; and 
felt a strange consolation in pledging herself with sacred 
solemnity to be wedded to none but him, and wedded in 
the grave. 

She was sitting, on the evening of the fete, till a late 
hour, at the casement that had been so often a witness to 
her tears and prayers. The joyous.tumuli of the city as 
the multitudes poured out to the palace gardens, the 
echoes of the martial music, the glitter of the fireworks, and 
the shouts of the people— all formed a depressing con¬ 
trast with the solitude of one who had so lately been the 
gaze of' her splendid circle. An involuntary sigh broke 
out for her sudden and total separation from the natural 
enjoyments of her youth ; and she wished that she were 
in her grave. Yet the feeling was but momentary ; the 
thought was checked by the remembrance of her bene¬ 
factor. 

“ How imaginary were her sufferings to what bis might 
be ! In what misery ot mind might he not at that hour 
be thinking of his country ? in what actual calamity might 
he not be wasting away his invaluable life ? Yay, while 
the thought was passing through her mind, might he not 
be breathing his last in the dungeon, and reproaching the 
heartlessness that left him to perish without an effort for his 
restoration ?” 

In the impulse of irresistible feeling, she resolved to 
hazard the world’s opinion, to be contented to hurt her 
own sensitive delicacy, and solicit the aid of the minister 
in the renewal of her search. While she paced the apart¬ 
ment in the fever of her conceptions, she was stopped by 


HEBE. 191 

* ' \y . 

'the sound of a mandolin accompanying a female voice of 
peculiar sweetness in the garden below. The presence 
of a stranger at that hour would have alarmed her, but 
that she rvas won to listen by the singular power of the 
voice, and the elegance of the style. The zinganehs* are 
the musicians of the Hospodariate ; and the performer who 
had made her way thus unceremoniously into the garden, 
was of the number. Hebe listened with melancholy plea¬ 
sure to the touching tones of the singer as she tried a sue- 
cession of popular airs. But the night waned ; she threw 
money from the window, turned away, and was led back 
by the peculiar brilliancy of the performance with which 
the zinganah returned her thanks for the liberality of the 
reward. A second donative was given. The female 
approached as if unwilling to leave so profuse a donor ; 
and at the same moment a billet fell at Hebe's feet. Her 
mind, perpetually fixed on one subject, instantly conjec¬ 
tured it to have some reference to the boyar’s fate. For 
once hope had not deceived her. The billet contained 
merely the words in pencil: “ The boyar is in Constan¬ 
tinople, a prisoner, and in danger.” The light of the 
chandeliers seemed to quiver before her ; the ground 
seemed to heave ; her breath stopped ; she felt herself 
falling, and grasping at whatever was next her for support, 
she sank upon the ground. How long she remained in 
this trance she could only conjecture. Her first sensa¬ 
tion of life was a cold weight upon her arms. She glanced 
fearfully round ; the lamps were burning dim; but the 
moon light fell strong upon the window' by which she had 
sunk, and it showed that she had pulled down the scimi¬ 
tar and pistols of the boyar. 

This accident was taken in her agitated state of feeling 
for an indication of a higher will. She formed her reso¬ 
lution upon the spot, and waited impatiently for the tardy 
coming of day. When it arrived, she again set forth with 
those pompous equipages and stately train, whose atten¬ 
dance she required for the purpose of doing honour to tiie 
rank of her father. By the minister she was received as 
the woman of his heart would be received by a man of 


♦Gipsies. 




'192 


THE WALLACIIIAN's TALE. 


sensibility. But her few first words put an end to all the 
lighter hopes and elegancies of passion. She was calm and 
sad ; but her eye was stern ; and the accomplished lover 
saw at a glance that she would have spurned with the 
loftiest disdain the language of gallantry. Their discourse 
was brief and serious. She thanked him for the exertions 
by which he had hitherto saved the fortune and name of 
the boyar ; u and she had now but one request more to 
make.” 

“ Was it for a prolongation of the time ?” said the min¬ 
ister. “She had but to ask, and it must be granted ” 

“ No, it was for passports to take her across the fron¬ 
tier on her way to Constantinople.” 

The minister was thunderstruck. He remonstrated 
with her on the total improbability of the boyar’s bring 
in a Turkish dungeon ; on the almost impossibility of her 
finding him, if he were a prisoner ; and on the palpable 
peril of making her way through the provinces beyond the 
Danube 

“ Despatches,” said he, “ have reached the court but 
this morning, and which I mention to you while they re¬ 
main still a secret to all but the Hospodar, giving details 
of a revolution, as usual, bloody, that has occurred in the 
seraglio. 'The Sultan Selim is either put to death, or 
thrown into chains only to die. The whole capital was in 
uproar ; a large portion of it was in flames : and the jani¬ 
zaries were plundering in all directions when the des¬ 
patches came away. The Tartar who brought them, 
wives a dreadful account of the excesses committed bv the 
troops on the whole road from Constantinople to our fron¬ 
tier. The camp of the Asiatic janizaries at Adrianoplc 
is broken up, and the spahis and infantry are burning the 
villages, and shooting the unfortunate peasantry, and fight,- 
ing each other through the countrv.” He concluded bv 
telling her that, it was only an act of friendship to prohibit 
her generosity from encountering this hazard. Her life 
must be the sacrifice of the attempt to penetrate without 
a strong escort into any part of Rumelia. 

Hebe argued, entreated, implored ; but the minister 
was inaccessible to the spell. His resistance was but 
made firmer by his passion. He dreaded the certain re 


tlEEE, 


493 


suit of her self-devotement; and when she at last rushed 
<n tears of resentful anguish from the cabinet, he con¬ 
gratulated himself upon the power of self-command that 
had saved so noble and exquisite a creature for the happi¬ 
ness of society—for perhaps his own. 


CHAPTER XV. 

The young Greek retired to her chamber ; but it was 
not to rest, nor even to linger in pleasing melancholy at 
the casement which had witnessed so many ah aspiration 
of her desolate heart. A new spirit beat in her pulses. 
She waited but till the sinking sounds of Bucharest should 
tell her that she might pass through the streets unnoticed. 

At midnight, attended but by one domestic, she rode 
out of the gates, and set off at full speed to the moun¬ 
tains. By dawn, the magnificent range of the Carpa¬ 
thians rose out of the darkness before her. She recog¬ 
nised one by one, under the purpling of the eastern cloud, 
the peaks familiar to her childhood ; and as she plunged 
into the rich dells and bowery forests of the lower region 
of the hills, felt herself as if she were again among friends 
unchangeable. 4 

The sight of the summer palace at Cantacuzene, in 
which she had spent so many days, untroubled by the 
knowledge that there was evil in the world, brought 
recollections that almost subdued her. She would have 
rejoiced to sit once more, if it were but once, under the 
shade of those vines and roses where she had so often 
listened to the wisdom of her father’s lessons, or cheered 
his evening witii her voice and lyre. But she had a solemn 
task to do : in the strength of it she resisted all impulses 
beside ; and pausing on a rising ground, from which the 
palace and the whole luxuriance of garden and fruitage 
round it were visible, she gave a few moments to fond¬ 
ness and sorrow ; then turned away her horse’s head, and. 
without setting foot within those walls of memory. 

Vol. I.—17 





TIIE WALLACEian’s tale. 


plunged still further into the hills, nor cast a look behind 
until she reached the dwelling of the father of her lost 
Theodore. 

From the time when his son’s death was announced to 
Justiniani, he had forsworn the world. Misfortune, that 
softens some hearts, embitters others ; and Justiniani, ex¬ 
claiming that mankind was one great combination of base¬ 
ness ami cruelty, closed his door again 1 1 mankind. Soli¬ 
tude, and the constant indulgence of resentful thoughts, 
had produced their natural effects on the countenance and 
temper of the veteran soldier. 

Hebe had left him full of the animation, kindness, and 
graceful pleasantries of the best classes of his country. 
She found his green old age now converted into infirmity. 
The hair was white as snow, the eye fierce, and the tone 
embittered and angry. But the father welcomed her as 
he would have welcomed no other being on earth. He 
told her that “ they were partners in misfortune ; and the 
community of evil made her dear.” He took her hand in 
a hand trembling with emotion ; gazed upon her face, as 
it from it his withered heart were again to drink strengtli 
and hope ; and when lie caught her to his aged bosom, 
burst into a passion of tender grief, and blessed her as his 
child. But one purpose was now the living mistress of 
all her thoughts, and she detailed her project to him with¬ 
out delav. * 

•r > 

There had not been in the service a more daring candi¬ 
date for every hazardous enterprise than Justiniani in the 
days of his campaigning. But he shrank from the hazards 
which the fragile being at his side summoned him to en¬ 
counter. For himself he had no fear, and might have felt 
the hand a friendly one that released him from a world of 
which he was weary ; but the exposure of Hebe to the 
chances, or rather to the deadly certainties of an expedi¬ 
tion through kingdoms of armed savages, struck him as a 
wilful tempting of misfortune and death. 

He declared the proposal utterly impracticable by -her : 
but offered to go in her place. Yet, when Hebe looked 
at the premature infirmity of the old man, and not less 
the impatience of human kind that broke out in ever. 

. word, and lighted up every glance of his eyes with re¬ 
sentment, she saw the fate that must befall him from the 


IIEBE, 


195 


first fatigues of the journey, or the dagger of the first 
Turk who crossed his way. 

It was now her hopeless task to dissuade the old man 
from encountering the risk of such a journey. But she 
found that, if the passions of ag£ are slowly kindled, they 
are not to be extinguished but w'ith life. The idea of 
rescuing his friend and officer swelled continually upon 
Jusliniani’s contemplations, until it became like hers, the 
whole impulse of his being ; and before the day was past, 
he had wrought himself into a belief that the attempt 
was reserved for him of all mankind ; that he had been 
sustained through so many years of peril for the express 
purpose; and that his last hours would be happy or 
wretched according to their devotion to the freedom of 
Cantacuzene 

To argue with this enthusiasm of friendship was idle ; 
and Hebe applied herself to the next less difficult effort of 
obtaining leave to accompany her father’s friend. She re¬ 
ceived an immediate and stern repulse. But she was not. 
to be repelled. She argued, prayed, and finally conquered 
in her turn ; and the first glimpse of gray light on the 
pinnacles of the Carpathian saw them both on their way' 
across the mountain-ridge to Hungary ; a long circuit, 
but the only road bv which they could hope to pass un¬ 
molested into the territory of the sultan. 

The young Greek had reason to congratulate herself on 
the energy of her decision. Another day’s delay in Bu¬ 
charest would have seen her under a formal prohibition of 
leaving the city. The minister's Knowledge of her ardent 
mind had told him that no time w 7 as to be lost in saving 
her even against her will ; and his first act on her taking 
leave w T as to sign an order for her surveillance, which was 
to be put in force next morning. But the prize was 
flown. Surprised and alarmed at the intelligence, he de¬ 
spatched couriers to the summer palace, which they had 
reached before her arrival on her jaded horses. Had she 
given way to the indulgence of her feelings, and paused 
there, she must have been under an arrest ; w hich, well 
meant and honourable as it might be, u T ould have finished 
her enterprise, and in the bitterness of disappointment 
probably put a period toiler life. 


« 









196 


T1IE WALLACHIAn’s TALE. 


But now the plains under the safeguard of the black 
eagle spread before her. Hope grew in her heart. The 
exultation that all feel on having ascertained their own 
power to triumph over obstacles that once seemed impos¬ 
sible, danced in her eyes"; and as she gave her horse the 
rein along the level fields of Hungary, then blooming with 
innumerable wild flowers, and covered with the rapid vege¬ 
tation of the south, her old companion could scarcely 
withdraw his glance from her animated beauty. He had 
seen her the living image of sorrow, of that deepest sorrow 
which refuses to solace itself by complaint ; the colour of 
anguish deep in every feature ; and at his first sight he had 
thought her in the last stage of some disease that defied 
remedy. 

The change was miraculous. Health, hope, and love 
were in her countenance. With the ardour of youth, she 
predicted success to their enterprise ; and distance and 
time seemed to her sanguine spirit trivial difficulties, as 
she gazed at the mighty mountain-range that they had 
passed. “ There,” said she,I might have remained like 
the thousands and tens of thousands now lingering in doubt 
and danger for want of the determination to cross 
them. Here the world is before us. If I fail, 1 shall 
have the consolation to know that my failure has been by 
events that no human wisdom can control. If I suc¬ 
ceed—oh, if I succeed !” 

Her eyes filled at the thought; and the old man felt but 
little of the infirmities of age or the exhaustion of the 
journey, while he listened to her glowing anticipations. 
To Hebe the world was illumined by that torch which 
the ancient fable so gracefully consigned to the lands of 
youth alone. Hope tinged the monotonous landscape 
into beauty ; and, when at last the towers of the u white 
city”* - rose on the evening sky, she was astonished at the 
rapidity of her journey, and buoyant with the strong assu¬ 
rance, that once across the Danube, her difficulties were 
.at an end. 

The Turk is a wild beast, and he has the habits of one. 
When his appetite is roused, nothing stands in the way of 
its gratification. When his appetite is satisfied, nothing 


* The literal translation of Belgrade, 


HEBE. 


19*1 


rouses him to effort. He can be as vigilant as the hungry 
wolf, and sleep as torpidly as the wolf after gorging his 
prey. Belgrade was asleep. Austria, exhausted by her 
late wars with France, and encumbered with debt, had no 
inclination to rouse her Mahometan neighbour ; and Bel¬ 
grade, every stone of whose walls was dyed over and over 
in moslem and Christian gore, now lay open like a city of 
pilgrims. The travellers passed through massive gate and 
frowning battery unmolested; and making some slight 
preparation for the passage of the wild tract that spreads 
from the Danube, turned to the Grecian border, from 
which they were to reach Constantinople by the only route 
safe from the armies. ^ 

For three days they rode through the deserts of Servia ; 
deserts made more melancholy than the lifeless wilderness, 
by the scattered traces of miserable life. A mud-cottage, 
the ruin of a church, the burnt fragments of villages, at 
immense distances from each other in the bosom of for¬ 
ests, showed that the hand of the tyrant was there in its 
heaviness. The few peasantry were half naked, and 
blackened with exposure to the chances of the seasons; 
and they every where fled from the sight of the travellers, 
in the customary belief that every coming of the stranger 
was the signal of new extortion. 

Yet those countries were once the garden of the 
Roman empire. The immense extent from Croatia to the 
shore of the Euxlne was crowded with flourishing cities ; 
was opulent, fertile,, illustrated with the finest works ol 
art and architecture, and abounding in a cultivated peo¬ 
ple, who retained the daring of their northern ancestors 
in union with the refinement of their Roman sovereigns. 
But the hordes of the Caucasus at length fixed among 
them that banner before which mankind withers and dies 
away. Pestilence was harmless to the grim despotism 
of the barbarian Osmarilee. Ruin irrecoverable sat upon 
the land like night ; and after a few desperate struggles, 
tint only crushed the last hopes of independence, those 
struggles of nation* on the edge of the grave, that but 
plunge them more headlong, the Turk was lord of the 
undisputed soil. 

To escape the casual insolence of the spahis going to 

17 * 





108 THE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 

join the army, Hebe had at Belgrade changed her dress 
for the common travelling habiliments of the moslemen. 
The cloak and turban concealed her sufficiently from the 
passing eye, and the boyar’s daughter rode forth from the 
gate the son of Justiniani. 

The value of the precaution was soon to be tried. 
They were riding up the slope of the Argentaro moun¬ 
tains, when, on entering the ravine through which the 
principal road leads to the city of Sophia, Hebe’s quick 
ear perceived the trampling of horse. The traditionary 
horrors of falling into the hands of the Servian banditti, 
or the Turkish troops roving on their excursions to gather 
the taxes, started to her nnnd, and she implored her com¬ 
panion to turn out of the way, and take shelter in the 
woods. 

But his ears could hear nothing, and he attempted to 
reason down her alarms by the reputation of the new 
pacha for an activity which had “ hanged up robbers until 
the name was unknown.’* The authority of age prevailed, 
and, with sad forebodings, Hebe rode into the ravine ; 
where, if superb displays of nature could have cured un¬ 
easy thoughts, she might have forgotten much in the sight 
of the spiry cliffs, and the sheets of the brilliant verdure 
that hung on them like drapery. A river, too far below 
for its roar to-be heard, rolled in silver surges through 
rocks tinted with every hue of the richest marbles. A 
solitary eagle, roused by their approach, wheeled above in 
broad circles, the genius of the pass ; and the sun still sat 
in his glory on the summit of the central ridge, colouring 
tree, river, and cloud. 

But h shot from the thicket broke the beauty of tho 
scene, and a sudden plunge of Justinianrs horse showed 
that the ball had been fearfully near. The time for delibe¬ 
ration was gone. Hebe cast a single glance to the spot 
from which they had ascended, but there stood a ‘group 
of ferocious figures ready to fire. There was no alterna¬ 
tive : she must go forward ; and, calling to her compan¬ 
ion, she darted up the ravine. A dropping fire followed ; 
and her horse, terrified by the sound, dashed away over 
brake and brier, with a force that she could not master, until 


HEBE. 


199 


he became entangled among the thickets, and exhausted 
himself. 

Ilebe’s terrors were now for. Justiniani, who had not 
appeared, and yet whom she dreaded to call, lest her voice 
should bring the robbers on her track. After long anxi¬ 
ety she dismounted, and with her delicate hands urged her 
way through the overgrown wood. But all was silent. 
She listened with that intense ear which equally dreads 
silence and sound as the signals of ruin At length she 
heard a low groan, and ventured forward. 

A human figure lay on his face in a thicket near the 
road. He was evidently dying. She sprang lorward to 
relieve her friend. The dying man gave a last ghastly 
look from the ground ; ami with inexpressible lightening 
of heart she saw that he was not Justiniani. But while 
she trembled at the sight of death thus fearfully presented 
to her for the first time, the robber pointed to a rivulet, 
to which he had vainly endeavoured to drag his broken 
limbs. Hebe flew, brought back successive draughts of 
the water in a shell, and held them to a lip that was now 
convulsed with the last agony. 

Terrified a^the struggles of retiring life, she was with-, 
drawing behind the rock, when she was summoned again 
by a gesture of the robber. He had recovered his speech, 
and thanking her for her charity, drew from his bosom a 
small silver crucifix. “ Take this,” said he, “ in memory 
of a man driven by misfortune to crime ; but if ever you 
meet Seid Ali, the galiondgee,* show him this token, and 
tell him that you gave their last draught to the lips of his 
dying brother.” She took the crucifix ; the robber turned 
on his face, and breathed no more. 

The young Greek was now left to think of her own 
desolate situation. The twilight was already deepening 
round her, and to find her way through a region of per¬ 
petual forest was hopeless. But to return upon her steps 
was next to ruin ; for she had received too certain evi¬ 
dence that she was in the track of one of those bands, 
occasionally peasant, soldier, and robber, and, as chance 
turns, all three at once, that are the natural growth of 


* Turkish sailor, 








200 


THE wallaciilan's tale. 


Turkish government, and make the terror of the Servian 
traveller. 

Yet, to leave Justiniani to perish in the woods was im- 
possible With a secret horror quivering in every nerve, 
she re-trod the pass, traced the foot-marks in the clay 
where the robbers had rushed out, and listened wildly for 
the sounds of life. But she heard nothing but the rush of 
the wind rising as the night fell, or the screams of the 
kites and eagles returning to their nests in this realm of 
rocks, where they were seldom disturbed by the tread of 
man. Night came at last, hut it was fortunately mild : 
the stars were without a cloud, and their twinkling in that 
lofty region and pure atmosphere gave a light sufficient to 
guide the traveller. But Hebe's slender frame was now 
utterly exhausted by fatigue (tnd agitation, and her eyes 
felt heavy with sleep, in which she dared not indulge. 

The utter solitude ternfied her; yet she had other 
sources of fear. From her youth she was familiar with 
the tales of all the formidable things that beset the wan¬ 
derer in the Servian forests ; — the wolf-packs ; the herds 
of the wild dog ; the ounce and bear that ranged the 
hills ; and still more alarming, the superstitious shapes that 
old ignorance had created in the wilderness. She thought 
of the water-fiend ; of the plague-spirit, that came over¬ 
shadowing the air in the blackness of the pestilence ; of 
the vampire, that, assuming every varying form of the 
world of guilt and darkness, fastened its fangs on the 
human prey ; and of the blood-fiend, the fiercest visitant 
that afflicts fallen human nature—the tormentor that, 
without striking the merciful blow by which life perishes, 
sits on the heart with a perpetual weight, arid fills the im¬ 
agination witli a perpetual passion for the sacrifice of life, 
before which the sense of mercy perishes, the conscious¬ 
ness of a common nature with our victim is turned into 
fury, the man becomes thirsty for slaughter, and assuming 
the instincts of the wolf and the tiger, flies at his spe¬ 
cies, and slays, or, if baffled, rushes out to the wood, and 
crouches to bathe his jaws in the gore of the first wretch 
that falls under a strength increased by madness and the 
fiend beyond the resistance of man. 

But the heart of the young Greek was not made to sink 


HEBE. 


201 


under fears of the imagination. She thought of the father 
of Theodore perishing by famine or wounds if she deserted 
him, and she felt that to leave him would be to embitter 
her hours to the close of her existence. From a half slum¬ 
ber she started on her feet to recommence the search, and 
called out the name of her companion. A few paces on¬ 
ward she heard a low groan. She burst eagerly through 
the thicket, and found Justiniani. 

His hazards had been even more formidable than her 
own- A shot which struck his horse had soon disabled 
the animal, and the rider had no resource but to throw 
himself off, and take to the woods ; but the robbers were 
instantly in pursuit. For a while he ran on ; but his 
strength failed, and he felt himself seized. His captor 
was alone, and the habits of the old soldier revived in 
him with the hope of escape. He made a desperate re¬ 
sistance, and in the struggle they both rolled over the pre¬ 
cipice. The fail stunned him, and he knew no more, than 
that Hebe’s voice had filled him with life again. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

The moon was in her meridian, and by her light they 
slowly made their way. Their remaining horse was qui¬ 
etly grazing on the spot where his mistress had left him. 
The body of the robber lay on the ground, and Justini¬ 
ani recognised him as his captor. By another glance ho 
discovered that he was a hussar who had once served in 
his own troop. 

“ He was a bold fellow,’' said he, u given to every kind 
of excess ; but fierce as a lion, and in his time of no small 
celebrity as an admirer of the fair sex. He deserted from 
the regiment one night, and by the next morning was on 
his way to Paris with his bride, none less than an heiress 
of the haughty house of Herzberg. All Vienna was in 
wonder; the princes and potentates of the illustrious 
house were in an uproar; the whole posse of the Vienna 


/ 





202 


tiie wallachian’s tale. 

»' .. 

police was in full pursuit ; and one half of the regiment 
was wild with envy, and the other half with laughter. 
But the fellow knew too much of his trade to be taken. 
The hussar practice is no bad training for a fortune- 
hunter.” 

The old man’s spirits rallied as he thought of his days 
of youth. “ The first intelligence of my deserter trans¬ 
pired at Paris. For a week he outblazed every body 
there ; flourished in an uniform that turned all the young 
chevaux legers ’ brains with imitation ; and set the first 
fashion of diamond rings round their feathers, gold spurs 
to their boots, and silver pipes from morn till night nnder 
their high born nostrils. Princesses quarrelled (or him ; 
and the world went far enough to say that even queens 
smiled on him. As for the million of marchionesses and 
that canaille of the soiree and the drawing room who 
adore and plunder every body, they of course loved and 
pilfered the * handsome hussar,’ count or duke of heaven 
knows what interminable title. But in a little month all 
was gone— the establishment, the diamonds, and the cheri 
des dames himself, the ‘ handsome hussar,’ leaving to the 
world of Paris nothing but his debts, his red pantaloons, 
and his example. 

u His bride was speedily re-consigned to the hands of 
her superb family The ladies of Vienna are proverbially 
compassionate and curious ; and as the misfortune might 
have happened to any one of themselves, they visited the 
fair traveller by shoals to condole with her on her cala¬ 
mity, to hear how runaway matches were best managed, 
and to inspect her French caps. The men, adorned with 
their best meerschaums, visited her in shoals to ascertain 
how far she was disposed to transfer her hand, and her 
still large estates, into the possession of any other showy 
runaway. 

‘‘Affairs are rapidly settled, where all parties are already 
agreed. It was declared that the marriage was vitiated. 
The fair dame was handed over to her own uncle or ne¬ 
phew, I forget which, as the estate was not to be further 
hazarded out of the family ; and the wedding, which cost 
but a hundred thousand rix-dollars, set all Vienna in de¬ 
light ; and who would not expend a hundred thousand 


11 EKE, 


203 

; 

rix-doliars to make three hundred thousand souls happy ! 
For a dozen days the city was in danger of perpetual 
conflagration from the showers of squibs and sky-rockets : 
and the most plethora-breeding capital of Europe was 
in more danger of sudden deaths by feasting than ever it 
was by famine, from Rudolph of Hapsburg to Sobieski, 
“ I saw the bride in my last visit to the capital. She 
was become the very terror of her tribe—virtue armed 
cap-a-pee ; prudence of the most furious kind. Her eye 
had the vigilance of the lynx in detecting human lapses. 
She was the public scourge of all offenders, and, like a 
death’s-head, was all ugliness, bone, and morality. 

“ The hussar emerged again, after long years of the 
struggles of a ruined gambler and profligate against the 
ruin that eveiy night brings on the lovers of the die. lie 
had never stirred from Paris. As a man flung overboard 
starts up from the bottom in the precise spot where he 
went down, the huxsar sprang up from the pool that had 
buried him. But the luck that iiad once borne him upon 
the surface was gone-; and Paris, the only capital in which 
he could have so contrived to live and hide, grew weary 
to him. lie turned his helm to the Mediterranean ; and 
by one of those strange chances that arrive only to make 
us wonder at the fortune of knaves, became captain of a 
Turkish frigate. 

u lie was dauntless enough ; and as he robbed and 
lavished his plunder with oriental spirit, he might have 
soared to the honours of some pachalic, or even borne the 
flag of a capudan pacha. But the genius of the die was 
at his heels, and he lost every piastre. Strong temptation 
came in his way too. He was appointed to carry a party 
of the sultanas and their attendants to one of the summer 
palaces on the Bosphorus. He took them on board, lin¬ 
gered off the seraglio until night, and then with a flowing 
sheet darted down the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean. 
u The commander of the faithful found his summer pa- 
! lace empty ; and tearing his beard, ordered his whole fleet 
in pursuit of the robber. But lie might as well have or¬ 
dered them on a voyage to the'moon. They roved from 
the Dardanelles to the sea of Azof, while the hussar was 
i throwing the dice again in Malta. lie had carried his 


r 





104 THE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 

fair captives to the African beys, who were charmed with 
this augmentation of their establishments, and purchased 
them at his own price. He was not unreasonable, and 
sultanas were never so cheap at Tripoli, Tunis, and Al¬ 
giers. His Majesty of Morocco came in for all that now 
remained on his hands, the frigate ; whose value he imme¬ 
diately added to the price of his female cargo, and trans¬ 
ported the whole to the Maltese faro bank ; from which it 
was as speedily transmitted to the pockets of the privileged, 
the principi, contesse, and cavalieri of the most high- 
blooded generation that ever hated Turk and pilfered 
Christian* 

“ From that time he disappeared, and I heard no more 
of him ; though our curiosity in the regiment was often 
raised to know what had become of a fellow whose ex¬ 
ploits, much more than our own, had made our corps the 
public theme. But I felt satisfied that he was not likely 
to live in this world, nor go out of it the way of other men, 
and to-day has verified the conjecture. Yet I am not sorry 
that, ruffian as he was, an old comrade perished by no 
blow of mine*” 

Hebe led the way through the pass, which, though more 
rugged as it rose, lay in the broad moonshine, and would 
have offered but few difficulties to the ordinary traveller. 
But her feet were wounded, and her strength was sinking. 
She had placed Justiniani upon her horse, for his fall had 
disabled him ; and thus a creature almost as fragile as the 
wild blossoms round her, and accustomed to all the soft¬ 
ness of opulent life, was toiling her anxious way at an 
hour, when even the most wretched take their rest ; and 
in a wilderness whose rocks and thickets were terrible to 
the peasantry in noonday. 

Yet she sustained it, all. She had a purpose, which with 
her was its own reward. Torescue her father had become 
the great object of her being : and the sacrifice of life 
would have been deemed cheap for the preservation of the 
generous and noble protector of her infancy. 

But she had now a new care to overwhelm her. As 
the day broke, Justiniani’s countenance exhibited signs of 
sudden feebleness. He had received some internal injury, 
which, at his age, nature was unable to sustain, The 


IlEIlE. 


205 


movement of the horse became too painful to him, and he 
desired Hebe to leave him where he was, and look to her 
own preservation. She made no other answer than to 
gather a heap of the heath and dry leaves, which she 
made into a pillow for him ; and watched at his side until 
some of the chance passers-by should relieve her. 

Day lingered on in this painful uncertainty. She could 
endure suspense no longer, and took the horse to ride for 
assistance to the first village. But village there was none. 
From the summit of the pass her eye commanded an im¬ 
mense sweep of the landscape ; but it was an unbroken 
sweep of forest: no spire of church, no* smoke of cottage, 
no sound of bell, no ploughed field, no sign that man had 
ever trod the land since the deluge, met her dejected con¬ 
templation. 

At length the echo of horns, and cries which reminded 
her of those which she had heard from the robbers, roused 
her, and she fled back to where she had left Justiniani. 
But he was gone. The marks of recent fire were upon 
the spot where he had lain. Her horse’s hoofs threw up 
the still living sparkles from the ashes of his bed. But all 
else round her gave no sign of human being. 

The thoughts of some horrid catastrophe to the helpless 
old man, the fury of wild beasts, the cruelty of bandits, 
the thousand fearful chances that might happen to the 
solitary and the feeble in this land of loneliness and crime, 
crowded into her mind. But to remain was hopeless ; 
and yet, where was she to turn her wandering way ? The 
instinct of her horse saved her from this perplexity. Ac¬ 
customed to journeying through the woods, as the camel 
through the desert, he caught sounds that escaped her ear ; 
and no sooner felt the reins loose than, after snuffing up 
the air from all quarters of the horizon, lie made his choice, 
and galloped forward with a quivering ear and a glan¬ 
cing eve. 

In less than an hour he had made his way through the 
thicker part of the wood into an open space of wild and 
rocky magnificence, but whose sublimities were gladly 
forgotten in the evidence that human beings had been lately 
there. The remnants of trunks and packages were lying 
on the grass. A shattered tent-pole still upheld a flatier- 

Vol. I.—18 







THE WALLACTIIAN’s TALE. 


20 & 

mg fragment of canvass, and a circle of wild dogs were 
revelling over the remnants of a meal. Hebe started back 
from those sharers in human hospitality ; but they were 
fortunately too busy to think of her or her steed, and her 
coming was noticed only by a loud and general howl. 

But to pass them was dangerous ; while to turn back 
from the hope of immediate succour was worse. She 
was about to make the desperate effort, when the clang 
of horns and the galloping of horses, cocked her ; and in 
a few moments more a group of riders with lances and 
fire-arms rushed from the wood, and commenced a general 
chase of the dogs. The pursuit was brief; for the wood 
was nearly impenetrable, arid the animals had darted away 
in all directions at the first shot. Hebe next became an 
object of attention ; and the showy horseman at the head 
of the troop told her that they w'ere the escort of the Nea¬ 
politan envoy’s wife to Constantinople ; and asked for 
news of the country through which they were to pass. 
She had but one question to return ; it was, whether they 
had seen her old companion ? Their answer relieved her 
heart of a weight. u He was found ©n the roadside, un¬ 
able to move: they had put him on a mule, and he was 
now with their party, which they had left encamped a mile 
or two off, when they rode back to have an hour’s ride 
after the dogs.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

The Neapolitan ambassadress was a handsome woman ; 
and had been handsomer, which she still remembered with 
the vigour of a first impression ; was of middle age, which 
she was determined to forget ; and was married to a little, 
crabbed diplomatist, of whom the recollection was as sel¬ 
dom as possible suffered to cloud her mind. 

The young Greek’s passionate joy at seeing Justiniani, 
and her anxious inquiries, delighted the sensitive spirit of 
the lady ; who declared that nothing was more praisewor- 



IIEBE. 


207 

thy or less frequent among the sons of old men, than con¬ 
gratulation of any kind on their prospect of long life. 

And Hebe’s involuntary display of duty was not the 
less estimable in the lady’s eyes, by its being exhibited by 
one of tiie handsomest youths that her travels had ever 
brought under her observation. 

A brief dialogue established the possessor of such a form 
and such brilliant eyes, in the good opinion of the ambas¬ 
sadress, as the most intelligent and promising young per¬ 
son imaginable, “ considering the difficulties of education 
in any other spot than Naples,” and she determined forth¬ 
with to complete what was wanting to his education. 

Like all the ladies of statesmen, the fair Italian was pro¬ 
found in politics, and settled the world much more easily 
than her lord contrived to do. Before supper the ambas¬ 
sadress had gone through the embarrassments of every 
nation of Europe; pointed out their blunders, which 
u none but fools could have made discussed their inter¬ 
ests, which “required only common sense.in the absurd 
persons whom kings would persist in putting at the head 
of affairs and concluded by a true declaration of the 
superiority of the boudoir to the cabinet, in all ages, from 
Cleopatra to Catherine. 

Her hearer, amused by the flights of this voluble ar¬ 
ranger of the destinies of mankind, assented to every thing ; 
and the fair orator, as soon as she recovered her breath 
after the explosion of politics, declared that she never 
had heard any young person who “ reasoned more justly, 
was more admirably susceptible of the force of truth, or, 
on the whole, fitter to rise to diplomatic distinction.” 

To have answered was till now almost impossible; for 
the cataract of unexpected wisdom had fairly borne down 
all attempts at reply. But now the hearer thanked the 
instructress, and simply mentioned that business of great 
interest urged her journey to Constantinople. 

“ Ha ! the very thing that I was thinking of for you,” 
said the ambassadress, with her eyes glittering at the happy 
facility of Greek apprehension. “ I shall put you on the 
list of the embassy at once. The envoy, poor man ! 
wants just such a secretary. You will engage with him 
of course, and your fortune is made.” 


208 


THE WALLACHIAN'S TALE. 


“ But I have absolutely none of the acquirements for 
the office,” said the listener. “ I have no experience, 
and but little knowledge. 1 fear my appointment would 
be a burlesque.” 

“ Poh, child, three-fourths of all our appointments are 
nothing else. Can you write your name to a passport? 
Can you sit at the bottom of the table, or at the side-table 
if required ? and can you fold a letter ? If you possess 
those invaluable acquirements, I promise you that you 
know and will do. as much as the infinite majority of the 
secretaires .” 

He be laughed, and acknowledged that she possessed 
those essentials for rising in the world of envoys. 

“Then,” said the Neapolitan, “ my charming young 
friend, I take you under my charge. You may rely on it* 
that those are the whole art and mystery. If it were any 
more how could it be mastered by the generation that they 
send out to ns, for our perpetual plague, and the equally 
perpetual astonishment of Europe? If a noble of 
Naples have a tenth son, too stupid for the hope of doing 
any thing with him at home, or too unruly to he kept 
within bound, he makes him a consignment to the un¬ 
fortunate ambassador. . 

“ So runs the system through all the grades of pushing 
one’s own flesh and blood. So runs the world of those 
delicate but remote relationships, that must be fed by some 
one or other ; interesting proteges , dropped from the skies 
in the wav of great men ; dependants, that no one names, 
yet every one knows, and so strangely like the generous 
patron, that as they can neither be suffered to be about 
the house administering topics to curiosity, nor can be 
acknowledged with any kind of biensean.ee , they must have 
the glorious task of serving their country as far from home 
as possible. So you see, my dear young friend, that if 
the ignorant murmur at our existence, it is simply because 
they are not in the secret. W e preserve the peace of 
families, as well as the peace of nations. 

“ You will find encumbering our palace at Pera twenty 
marquises ; and twice the number of others, quite as 
superbly born, but, unluckily, not privileged to bring their 
distinguished parentage quite so prominently before man- 


HEBE. 


209 


kind ; and every secretary of them the perversion of a 
good dancing-master. A few years of this laborious life 
returns them to their native shore, thenceforth to rest upon 
their laurels, and it is to be hoped, returns them excellent 
guitar-players, dexterous snuff-takers, persevering smo¬ 
kers, and delicate judges of perfumery. For those are 
their only studies among us for twelve hours a-day.” 

“ I have seen some of them in our capital,’* said Hebe 
with a smile ; 44 and they certainly raised my doubts of 
the advantages of travel.” 

u Heavens !” exclaimed the Venetian ; 44 you have seen 
them, and yet can smile when you say it. Now, my dear 
Greek, the very thought throws me into the most incor¬ 
rigible melancholy for the day. The word ennui was 
expressly invented for the sight of them. Let me meet 
plain ignorance and absurdity, and I can forgive and for¬ 
get ; but to meet the most intolerable affectation of the 
emptiest knowledge, and the actual essence of silliness, 
under the official grimace of sagacity—no ; those are 
trials to which no woman who values her life should be 
exposed. The fastidieux absolutely kills. Of all the 
bores of earth, the most overwhelming is assuredly the 
bore diplomatique .” 

44 But perhaps the world cannot go on without some¬ 
thing of the kind. We must have ambassadors,” said 
Ilebe. 

44 By all means, my dear; or how could my incompar¬ 
able little lord and master, or a great many other ladies’ 
incomparable lords and masters, keep up establishments ? 
And, however problematical the world may think it, we 
have our uses. The actual business, ’tis true, is done by 
consuls and couriers ; a Jew pedlar or a native spy; a 
gentleman 4 travelling to see’ mountains in the moon, or 
a physician 4 leaving his country for the health’ of all that 
he leaves behind him. But ambassadors are still good, 
while balls are to be given, the idlers of one kingdom to 
be introduced to the idlers of another, the newest songs 
to be transmitted home with the greatest rapidity, and 
prima donnas and premieres danseuses hired for the 
opera.” 


18 * 


210 


THE WALLACHtATi’s TALE. 


u But this curious state of things can, l presume, exist 
only in your famous kingdom said the Greek. 

“Ah! unquestionably in no other part of the earth 
replied the Neapolitan, with a laugh that showed her 
whole set of pearly teeth. “ And now I see the table 
ready in the supper-tent ; and we must try something 
more substantial than the merits of the corps of ambassa¬ 
dors du premier, second, et troisieme degres.” 


CHAPTER XVI1L 

Tiie tents were struck at day-break ; and to escape tire 
heat of the day, the whole train were on the march before 
sunrise. The morn was bright, the fields were flowery, 
the winds breathed soft, the bells of the mules and camels 
tinkled gaily ; and brighter, softer, and gayer than them 
all, was the fair Neapolitan. Side by side with her pupil, 
she felt the delights of an approving conscience, in having 
rescued so very blushing a youth from the hazards of the 
promiscuous world ; and, as wisdom cannot be taught 
too soon, she poured out her acquirements, and indulged 
herself with the philosophic contemplation of their effect 
on the cheeks of the intelligent listener. 

The ambassadress was one of those female absorbents 
of all kinds of knowledge, those ostriches of literature, 
which, like her diplomatists, are. it is to be presumed, 
found no where in the world but in Naples. She was a 
philosophe of the first water ; had made a pilgrimage to 
Ermenonville ; had sat in the chair at Ferney ; and con¬ 
stantly wore a curl of its master’s peruke in her bosom 
for a memorial of the “ enlightener of nations,” and best 
jester from the Alps to the Amies. She knew six lan¬ 
guages fractionally, and dove-tailed them all together into 
the true dialect of the accomplished. She had attended 
six courses in anatomy, physiology, horology, and the 



HEBE. 


eu 

Linnasan system ; and had in consequence attained the 
scientific distinctions between a cameleon and a came- 
leopard ; could discern without difficulty a bee from a 
butterfly ; and defied all attempts to pass off a rose for a 
marigold. Her astronomical progress had been unhappily 
broken up by the necessity of rejoining her husband ; but 
she had already advanced far enough to know the sun 
from the moon with the naked eye. 

Hebe was delighted with science so lavish and so pro* 
found ; and the hours flew along like the butterflies them¬ 
selves, until the gilded spires of the ancient city of 
Adrianople began to twinkle on the horizon like lingering 
stars. 

It was late in the day when the procession which con¬ 
veyed so much knowledge passed over the tottering and 
narrow bridge of the Tunsha. The ground was classic ; 
the ambassadress was classic too ; and, in right of the title, 
she confounded names and things without mercy. She 
pointed out the precise spot where Orestes bathed after 
his matricide ; and, on the strength of her road-book, 
showed the stone from which the head of Orpheus was 
flung into the Hebrus. But her observations were brought 
to a rapid close by Hebe’s discovery, that the Albanians 
who manned the fort under which they were passing, had 
pointed their guns towards the cavalcade, and were evi¬ 
dently under the impression that she was taking a plan of 
the works. Antiquarianism gave way at once ; and the 
woman of science, screaming out against barbarianism, 
hurried on the lingering escort with more credit to her 
sense of danger than to her philosophy. 

Adrianople already gave signs of that war which was 
so soon to burst out on the frontier: cannon were choaking 
up the streets, large bodies of cavalry were stabled in the 
squares, and every spot was crowded with clamorous 
Albanians and Janizaries. 

The circuit through those narrow and turbulent streets 
was long; and Hebe had scarcely presence of mind 
enough to preserve her incognito by her heroism, as she 
rode through the clusters of this savage soldiery mingled 
and quarrelling with the not less savage rable of a Turkish 
town. But the Frank quarter was distant; and her heart 


212 THE WALLACHIAN’S TALE. 

was sinking under alarm, until the ambassadress, pointing 
k> a lo-ng range of ruined battlements, overtopped by some 
dismantled towers, said, i<m There is the Frank fortress ; 
adding, “ on your arrival follow my janizary, who will 
lead you to your chamber ; and lose no time in equipping 
yourself, for I must have you at my conversazione /” 

Hebe listened in wonder; but she had been told in the 
course of the day’s instruction, that to be incapable of 
wonder was essential to the highest order of manners ; 
and she withdrew in silence to the chamber allotted to her. 
But the attendance of the janizary was not submitted to in 
such tranquillity ; though the honest Turk assured her that 
the ambassadress generally had two as the regular atten¬ 
dants of her toilet. 

Having seen Justiniani to repose, she now longed for 
rest herself. But the Neapolitan’s order for her appear¬ 
ance soon came in a tone that forbade delay ; and with 
we^ry limbs and drooping eyes she obeyed the summons 
of science. Yet, on her entrance into the apartment, her 
apathy, however high-bred, would remain no longer, and 
she gazed round with a look of irrepressible surprise. 
The room that an hour before she had left a naked and 
solitary scene of stained and dilapidated walls, was now 
covered with French draperies representing the loves of 
the ancient mythologies ; Isis made love to Osiris, Pan 
ran after Daphne, and Europa put to sea on the monarch 
of the herd. 

The young Greek turned away from those glowing con¬ 
templations of her classic patroness ; and was deservedly 
laughed at for her want of taste. A nude Venus filled 
up one corner, and an equally nude Cupid another; a 
bronze lamp from Pompeii, that would not burn, twinkled 
over the ceiling ; and a roll of papyrus, that had defied 
all the decypherers of Naples, depended from the hand of 
a gilded Mercury ; an herbal, an electrifying machine, 
and a laurelled bust of herself as Sappho, completed the 
more prominent furniture of the Neapolitan’s chamber of 
science. Its living ornaments were a Chinese missionary, 
returning from the Propaganda to Pekin ; an Englishman 
of rank and idleness, travelling anywhere, to travel back 
again ; a German geologist; a Tartar courier, brought 


HEBE. 


213 


in fqr the oddity of his long queue and yellow cap ; a Jew 
rabbi, whom the ambassadress proposed lo convert over 
his coffee ; a fat and jovial looking Mahometan priest, 
come to laugh at and live on the Europeans ; and a 
pale thin Greek monk, travelling to beg subscriptions for 
his convent on Mount Athos. 

“ You see, mon chereleve said the lady, 14 good society 
is to be had every where, if we have but the tact to select 
it; and as to those statues and antiques, they have travelled 
with me over half Europe. They are necessary to my 
feelings. You blush, child ; Science never blushes. This 
is mere rusticity. The eye of taste is no more startled 
by a Venus, than the Venus is startled by the eye of taste. 
You must learn to be an antiquarian and a classic, and 
look straight forward.” 

The conversazione was but a whisper, until the petit 
souper made its appearance. The cookery was good, the 
wine was select, and every tongue gradually relaxed. 
The ambassadress had found the true way to the soul of 
the wise. But their wisdom was the wisdom of Babel ; 
with the superior confusion of every man’s attempting, in 
the spirit of travelled display, to speak the language of his 
neighbour. 

The jargon was soon tremendous enough to baffle even 
the lady ; and after a few desperate efforts to interpret 
between the perplexed taikers, she gave up the task for 
the more congenial philosophy of examining the young 
Greek’s physiognomy. 

At last the Englishman, an elegantly formed and dressed 
personage, with a visage of languor, tipped with a pair of 
delicately curled Hungarian moustaches, rose from the 
side of the Chinese, who had been giving him a lecture 
on the British constitution,—without any ceremony seated 
himself on the sofa beside the ambassadress ; and inter¬ 
rupting a most profound developement of the theory of 
the tender passion, asked “ how her Excellenza had pos¬ 
sibly contrived, short of miracle, to get so many bores 
together ?” . 

The fair philosopher would have annihilated my lord 
marquis, if a flash of rage from the blackest eyes of Italy 
could wither hitn for his interruption. But he that hath 


THE VVALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


tu 

his quarrel just, is armed in triple steel. My lord marquis, 
with fifty thousand pounds a year, loving nothing, wanting 
nothing, and caring for nothing, felt himself at liberty to 
follow his will through the world His armour was the 
triple steel of wealth, self indulgence, and weary appetite. 
Nothing could now stimulate him but a new sauce, or 
vex him but a delay of post-horses. 

“ I wish sincerely, your Excellenza,” said he, yawning 
in her full vision, “ would make a dragoman* a regular 
part of your travelling establishment. ^In Turkey, I saw 
nothing that gave me a higher idea of their common 
sense than the dragoman, and their mode of peppering 
broiled chicken. Now. the dragoman here would reduce 
all this horrid strife of tongues to silence ; but one would 
speak at a time; that one speak in a whisper ; and with 
a pilaff, pipes, and sherbet, we might imagine ourselves 
again among the only people who enjoy life upon the 
map of the globe.” 

“ Then your lordship approves of the exclusion of 
females from society ?” 

“ Infinitely ; as but for that measure the dragoman 
would be useless. Their superior eloquence would drive 
the unfortunate officer out of the field.” 

u Well, my lord, your countrymen are at least candid. 
But I will engage that at home you feel the weight of our 
chains after all.” 

u Yes, overwhelmingly ; and for that reason,” said the 
marquis, with a still more prolonged yawn, u I have been 
absent those three years. You see I have none of our 
absurd notions of patriotism.” 

“ I beg your pardon, my lord,” said the lady, with a 
full blaze of her eyes upon the apathetic gallant, “ you do 
yourself infinite injustice, i have no doubt that your very 
absence was patriotism in the highest degree.” 

The marquis opened his half slumbering glance, and 
measured the speaker from head to foot; then, relapsing 
upon the pillow of the sofa, said, with a silver tone, “ There, 
too, I must yield to your Excellenza. 1 left many of my 
equals at home, and am probably forgotten long since : 


* Interpreter. 


HEBE. 


215 


while your Excellenza’s equals are hopeless, anti your 
distinctions in Italian society will be long remembered,— 
perhaps even as long as concert-rooms and casinos are 
popular.” 

Her Excellenza’s early history had been so seduously 
obliterated from her tablets, that she was indignant at its 
revival by any one else; and her indignation was by no 
means softened by the chance of my lord’s becoming the 
chronicler. But her address seldom slept. This dia¬ 
logue must not be protracted. The supper was done, 
and the only escape was cards ; which she proposed, with 
an apology for the introduction of an amusement so infe¬ 
rior to the intercourse of “ intelligent minds.” She added 
to her emphasis on the last words by a propitiary bow, 
and one of her very softest smiles to the lounging noble. 

“ Cards ; carissima mia ,” halt sighed hi3 lordship, 
“ did I not hear some one say something of'cards ?” 

u It was I who ventured,” said the lady, holding out 
her finely-formed, ungloved hand, in token of truce ; “ but 
I can conceive the contempt of the superior order of 
minds for those trilling contrivances of the idle and frivo¬ 
lous. Here, Carlo,” she called to an attendant, “ take 
this ecarte table away.” 

The marquis started up. “ May 1 beg that Carlo shall 
save himself the trouble ? Can your Excellenza have so 
much misconceived my opinion on the subject ? From 
rny fullest experience of society I respect those things 
which you call trilling contrivances, as among the most 
important instruments of life. Observe the infinite uses 
of those despised cards. 

“ They are the sovereign promoters of pleasure ; for 
they destroy that which destroys it—time. They extin¬ 
guish vanity of exterior ; for no female card-player can 
care for countenance or complexion.—They annihilate 
pride ; for the card-table instantly puts all on a level.— 
They are the actual antipodes of hypocrisy and deception ; 
for they have no equal in showing every crevice of the 
heart, and every wrinkle of the temper.—They prohibit 
flirtation and its consequent follies, early marriages, and 
a hopeless accumulation of children ; for love between 


21G tiie wallachiak’s tale. 

card-players is as impossible as love between the wolf 
and the wolf-dog. 

“ Then, do me the honour, Excellenza, to observe their 
positive advantages.—They make the enormous expendi¬ 
ture of time and money on books, graces, and accom¬ 
plishments, totally unnecessary ; for they require but one 
kind of skill to lead its possessor into the very central circle 
of good company.—They are more than equivalent to 
birth, profession, beauty, and talent ; for they command 
with a touch the opulence which the whole four, in innu¬ 
merable instances, fail to attain.—They provide occupa¬ 
tion for a race of human beings that it would perplex a 
philosopher to find room for in creation.—They devote 
to activity those hours of darkness which the indolence of 
mankind wastes in sleep.—They relieve patrician pockets 
of their weight, and distribute the burden among a multi¬ 
tude to the full as worthy, but a little more skilful.—And, 
finally, they solve the grand problem of society, and make 
man and wife mutually useful, from the moment that they 
learn each other’s game, enough to play into each other’s 
hands.” 

Hebe wondercdat this philosophy of kings, queens, and 
knaves ; but. her unfashionable wonder was told only by 
the more unfashionable medium of a cheek crimsoning like 
a new-born rose. The marquis had seen nothing like it 
since he left Dover; and he felt some curiosity to know 
how the phenomenon could have been contrived under the 
pupilage of the woman of science. 

But her Excellenza, charmed with the chance of at once 
drawing off his fire from her history, and of relieving him 
from a little of that opulence whose burden he had so feel¬ 
ingly described, ordered lights to her table ; and taking 
the cards in her hand, offered them to their panegyrist. 

He laid them on the table ; languidly pronounced, u I 
never play and threw himself back on the sola to indulge 
bis conjectures on the suspicious beauty of the stranger. 

But this was an amusement which the ambassadress had 
not intended to include among the delights of her party ; 
and she drew on a general conversation, by asking the 
jovial mollah* whether there was any probability of a war. 

* Mahometan priest. 


HEBE* 


a 1 * 

A>1 < 

The fat Mahometan, glad to disentangle himself from a 
controversy with the Persian on the length of Zoroaster’s 
beard, advanced to the sofa, on which sat the lady like a 
central luminary, dispensing the beams of science to the 
circle. 

u War is inevitable,” said the moll ah, bowing deferem 
tially to the ambassadress, u unless my lord the ambassador 
shall interpose his good offices with the custom-house at 
Odessa.” 

u And what on earth,” exclaimed the lady in an asto¬ 
nishment which was shared by her assessors, u has the 
custom-house to do with the business ?” 

f r" 

u It stopped a pair of bracelets coming from India to 
the sultana-mother. The bearer was caught in the attempt 
to smuggle the diamonds. The sultana was in due dis¬ 
pleasure. She went to her son, and insisted on his going 
to war without loss of time ; and to war he is going The 
Tartar yonder is carrying the despatches to the Danube.’ 

“ Heavens !” exclaimed the ambassadress, “how mon 
strous that those people should be always quarrelling! J 
shall not be able to have a single ridotto at Constantinople.” 

“ Cabinets seldom have so good a reason,” said the 
marquis ; “ the robbery of a fair lady’s jewels is unpardon¬ 
able. Nothing could palliate it, except carrying off the 
fair lady herself; which would probably have been a satis¬ 
factory recompense in the sultana’s eyes. Yet it is vexa¬ 
tious. If those barbarians begin to slay each other, it may 
be difficult to get relays.” 

The Chinese laughed at the mutual absurdity of wasting 
money on powder and shot. “ Let the Turk lay an em¬ 
bargo on. the tobacco, and no Muscovite will ever draw a 
trigger. Let the Muscovite buy up the opium, and the 
armies of the brother of the sun and moon will no more 
fight than an army of wood-pigeons. In China we insult 
the proudest nation in the world every day of their lives ; 
yet how long do our wars with the English continue ? We 
seize their people, we sink their ships, we burn their ware¬ 
houses, we call them beasts and baboons, and tell them 
that they are not worthy to wash the feet of a cat of the 
holy Yellow Empire. They burn with rage, and threaten 
to invade us ; we bid them do it, if they will. They tell 
Vol. I.—J 9 


218 


THE WALLACHIAN’s TALE. 


us that ten thousand of their red coats would pull oft all 
our mandarins’ tails, knock the head of the u Eternal 
Dragon” against the head of the immortal u Blue Bird,’ 
and hunt the irresistible Manchu dynasty beyond the great 
wall. 

“ We say, let them do it; and we know that they could 
do it in six months of any year for the last fifty. But do 
you think that we raise armies, send Tartars galloping 
through the country, and spend our money on powder and 
shot ? we do no such thing. We stop their tea. We say, 

‘ You shall boil no more of our weeds for your breakfast.’ 
We lock up our canisters fora week ; and before half the 
time is over we have the proud English on their knees, 
swearing that it was all a mistake ; that the insult was not 
on our part, but on their’s ; and that all they desire is to 
be the humblest servants of the Manchu, and to drink tea 
for ever.” 

Ilebe, trembling for the result of her journey under 
those new difficulties, asked the mollah whether any hope 
of peace could still be entertained. 

u None,” said the priest, “ none. The sultan Musta- 
pha is a different man from the sultan Selim. He has 
never made war, and has of course never been beaten. And, 
if other men are satisfied with the experience of mankind 
in those matters, sultans are the sons of wisdom, and must 
take'no experience but their own. He must lose an army 
or two, before he will believe any human being that the 
descendant of the prophet is not born to walk over the 
world.” 

u It is the same in Teheran,” said the Persian, wrapping 
His richly-ringed fingers in his long black beard. “ Man 
comes into the world with a bare chin, and he must take 
time to let his beard grow. It costs every sophi a dozen 
battles and a province to learn that heisnot a Roustan.”* 

“ I am not quite convinced,” said the Englishman, 
u that there is much difference between east and west in 
the imperial road to knowledge.” 

u But will the people of the Muscovite and the Turk 
suffer the experiment to be made?” said the young Greek, 
who was now taking her first lessons in diplomacy. 

“ That depends on circumstances,” said the Neapolitan. 

* The Invincible of Persian Romance. 


HEBE. 


219 


1 here are nations that love campaigning, as the highway¬ 
man loves the road, for its plunder. There are others that 
love it, as. the Frenchman loves dancing, for the display. 
But there are others that love it, as the eel does to be 
skinned ; and the attempt to skin the eel has cost the 
necks of czars or sultans, just as the Muscovite or the Turk 
happened most to dislike the operation.” 

“ Her Excellenza,” said the mollah, “is always in the 
right. I have travelled beyond the Danube, and know 
that the northern ass will kick like the southern one. But 
nature has said, Let the Osmanlee war with the Christians 
of all climes, no matter whether his beard be black or 
yellow, whether lie lose his toes by the frost of the Cau¬ 
casus, or turn them to chalk by the forbidden'liquor of 
the sunny Apennine.” 

All voices demanded the proof; and the fat mollah, 
swallowing a cup of that forbidden liquor which had already 
wrought its picturing on Ins skin, squatted himself on the 
floor, and with an air worthy of 9. professor of political 
economy, began his demonstration. 

u Every man,” said he, “has two reasons to shape his 
conduct in every thing ; the one weighty, which he never 
minds ; the other frivolous, but which is his true reason 
after all. The Osmanlee hates his neighbours, and his 
neighbours hate the Osmanlee ; the politicians say, be¬ 
cause they have opposite interests. The politicians are 
fools. They hate each other, because the one wears a 
hat and the other a turban ; because the one mounts his 
horse on the left side, and the other on the right; because 
the one uses a fork, arid the other his fingers ; because 
the one keeps the hair on his head, and the other shaves 
it off; because the one lets his wife show her face, and 
the other keeps her under lock and key.” 

“Santa Maria! how fortunate,” interrupted the fair 
Neapolitan, “ that the Turks were not the conquerors of 
Europe ! Our ladies ought to raise a statue to Sobieski. 
What classic model would you advise, my Lord Marquis ?” 

“Unless the Achilles should be engaged already,” replied 
rny lord, “ which all the world must feel to be the true re- 
* presentative of a modern hero, l should recommend your 

Excellenza’s choice of the Venus de Medicis. The frec- 

) v 


220 


TIIE WALLACIIIAN’s TALE. 


dom of the figure would be the most natural emblem pos< 
sible of the emancipation of the sex.” 

The fair dilettante cast a steady, inquiring glance 
towards the statue, as became a woman of taste. Hebe’s 
dark eyes were fixed upon the floor. The mollah resumed 
in the pride of oratory : 

“ After distinctions which thus draw the impassable line 
between empires; who can doubt that they are entitled 
to burn, ravage, and slay each other, as long as they have 
a dollar or a dragoon among them ? But add to those 
irresistible sources of hatred the bitter facts, that the Os- 
manli go to bed without taking off’their clothes ; that they 
abhor pork ; that they think the bow-string more honour¬ 
able than the axe ; that they pay their civilities, not by 
bending the head, but by pressing the bosom ; that they 
throw off their shoes on entering a room, and think slip¬ 
pers full-dress ; that the men wear gowns, and the women 
trowsers ; that their letters run from right to left; that 
they leave dancing to those who are paid for it ; that their 
Sabbath is Friday ; that they never uncover their heads ; 
that their widows wear white ; and that, instead of turning 
their toes out, they turn them in. Here,” said the trium¬ 
phant mollah, u I have not exhausted half my stock, yet 
have I not given proof that the grounds of w ar between the 
believer and the unbeliever are enough to make them slay 
each other till doomsday ?” 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Hebe was early awake. After the conversazione , she 
had sat during a large part of the night with Justiniani, 
whose frame, formidably enfeebled by his fall, w’t seemed 
to experience the sudden revival that security gives after 
peculiar hazard. She enlivened the old man’s spirits by 
a sportive detail of the evening’s philosophy ; and ret unit¬ 
ing to her chamber, laid herself on her pillow with that 
confidence of heart which belongs to the innocent and 
young. She awoke, like the birds, with the first rosy 
tinge of the sky, and with a heart as free from heaviness. 
The memory of Cantacuzene was there ; but the dan 



HEBE. 


221 


gcrs that she must still encounter were exalted into a noble 
trial; and when she looked upon the weariness, frivolity, 
and uselessness of life without a purpose, she felt more 
than cheered by the consciousness that .she had laid down 
for herself a duty worthy of the expenditure of her heart 
and her being. 

On this duty she was now ardent to proceed ; and she 
had thanked the ambassadress with passionate sincerity 
for her parting promise at night, that the morning should 
see them on their road. But all was silent in the long 
range of chambers. A hundred times she opened her 
door, with the nervous persuasion that footsteps were 
approaching to summon her. The huge city was long 
roused ; the smokes of the morning meal were thickening 
over the roofs ; the Albanians were mustering in .the mar¬ 
kets and squares below ; the long trains of artillery and 
baggage were already seen passing the gates, and trailing 
their heavy way like lines of loaded emmets up the rising 
grounds to the north of the city. The delay made her 
miserable ; and when noon was proclaimed from the mina¬ 
rets, she could endure her own perturbation no longer, 
and ventured to knock at the door of tiie Neapolitan’s 
apartment. 

She found the ambassadress still reclining on her pillows 
amusing her leisure with a French romance. The Greek 
shrank instinctively from this fearless developement of a 
morning beauty ; but the ambassadress had already made 
those mysterious provisions of colour and ringlet, which 
alone retard the visit to the continental toilet. The lady 
insisted on her remaining until siie was up. “ You have 
come, mon cher eleve, just in time to my assistance. I 
have been horridly perplexed these five minutes to think 
of what we shall have for the evening ; a tragedy or a 
farce, a concert, or the fantoccini.” 

Her hearer was all amazement, and expressed a hope 
that by evening they should he far from Adrianople. 

The ambassadress sat up in her bed, and stared with a 
look of supreme incredulity. “ It is impossible that you 
can be serious, my young and very s\Ivan friend. The 
roads are difficult. I am excessively tired, f shall see 
the ambassador quite soon enough ; and 1 had long since 

- iy* 


THE WALLACHIAN’s TALlJ. 


QOO 

made up my mind to spend a week in the first spot where 
I could find tolerable society.” 

Hebe deprecated a moment’s delay. She was “ ready 
to set ofi'; and the dangers of the road, if they existed, 
were more likely to increase than diminish, as, in case ot 
actual hostilities, the troops were perpetually disbanding 
and plundering on their way home.” 

“ Ingratitude, thy name is man,” exclaimed the ambas¬ 
sadress, in a quotation from the romance in her hand. 
u Why, mon cher , all this trouble is for your sole sake. 
The true diplomacy consists in knowing mankind ; and 
how, in the name of wonder, shall you know them if- you 
throw away such opportunities ? Observe, besides, the 
advantage of taking them so cheap as you have them here. 

u You can conceive no idea of the expense of lions 
in Paris or Vienna. It cost me a hundred and fifty se¬ 
quins to have an archduke’ seen sitting at a card-table. 
Rossini’s price for walking into a salon , laying his finger 
on a piano, and pronouncing it untouchable, was two 
hundred ; and Napoleon’s mameluke was so exorbitant an 
exhibition, that it would have absolutely made me bank¬ 
rupt, had he not consented to an abatement of the price, 
on consideration of coming without his court-dress, and 
remaining but five minutes in the room.” 

Hebe was in despair, and silently sat with her head on 
her tremulous hand, thinking alone of the evils of delay. 

“ The exquisite marquis, ’tis true,” continued the lady, 
“ is a specimen of a class to be found in all places, where 
enormous wealth justifies all kinds of its abuses. He is in¬ 
tolerably insolent, but clever; and will go the way of his 
tribe—his life, one of the postchaise, his end one of the 
pistol. The mollah, too, is the true believer that you will 
find realized in a thousand circles, where they know no 
more of Mahomet than of any thing else, always excepting 
dress, discontent, and cookery. But my yellow-capped 
and long-tailed Tartar—ah ! he would make the fame of 
any wonder-hunter happy enough to be the first to catch 
him. His queue is inimitable ; and his grim visage and 
his chattering are wortii a treasury to the lion fancier. 

u To you, however, he may stand for the representative 
of the travelling species ; a class perpetually flying from 
place to place until all interest, curiosity, and information 




HEBE, 


322 


are rubbed out from (heir minds; and ending in stupidity, 
worn out limbs, knowledge of inns, and the fragments of 
every selfish and silly, rude and ridiculous habit from one 
end of their peregrinations to the other. 

“ But, my dear friend, since it would be madness to 
throw away on a single sitting the plaited queue and 
yellow cap ot my Calmuek ; now,” said she, rising, u let 
me have your serious decision about the evening’s enter¬ 
tainment.” 

Hebe reasoned, remonstrated, and implored in vain. The 
lady was, for a while, too well employed in contempla¬ 
ting her own beauties in the mirror, as they grew under the 
hands of a French waiting-maid, to care for the wisdom 
or eloquence of mankind. But when the due perfection 
was complete, she turned to flash the light of her charms 
on the sensitive soul of the youth beside her. She found 
Hebe in tears. 

She was doubly charmed. No hero of romance could 
have taken a more touching method of acknowledging his 
homage. The Greek, trembling at the idea of intrusting 
her secret with the volatile being, whose disclosure of it 
was so probable, and might raise such impediments to her 
future success, sat for some moments struggling with her 
emotion. At length, falling on her knee, and pressing the 
fairest of fair hands to her lips, she prayed “ to be par¬ 
doned for the disclosure.” The Neapolitan conceded the 
pardon as soon as it was asked, and smilingly awaited the 
opening of the mystery. “ You see before you,” said the 
suppliant, u the adopted daughter of the boyar.” 

“ Mille diavoli!” screamed the ambassadress, spring¬ 
ing from the hand that vainly held her robe. u Wretch, 
begone! What monstrous deception !” She called vio¬ 
lently for her waiting-maid, who, however, was repairing 
her own charms, and did not come. 

Hebe disclaimed the intention of deceit, and pleaded 
the necessity of the disguise for female delicacy in so wild 
a journey. 

“ Abominable impostor!” was the only reply. “ Pre¬ 
tend to female delicacy, and yet wear that dress! Who 
ever heard of such a contradiction ? The Neapolitan 
embassy shall not be disgraced by your presence a mo¬ 
ment longerbegone!” 


224 


THE WALLACIIIAn’s TALE. 


The ambassadress darted from the room. Iiebe aston¬ 
ished, went to look for Justiniani, whose grave interposition 
she thought might produce peace ; but when she reached 
his chamber, she found him ill, and alarmed by the fear 
of some accident to her in her long absence. lie was 
lying down. His strength seemed to fail him ; and Hebe 
in silent wo sat thinking ol the utter helplessness in which 
they were both involved. 

To relieve the closeness of the chamber, she threw 
open the casement. The courts resounded with many a 
noise of muleteers, the market people with their barbarian 
dialect, and the janizaries keeping the crowd in order with 
whips and outcries. The sounds of the Albanian mus- 
quetry, as the troops marched through, firing in ail direc¬ 
tions, according to custom ; and the trampling of the 
squadrons of cavalry, made a din too loud for Hebe’s ear, 
yet which the old man, in the recollection of his early 
days, was willing to enjoy to the last. “ It reminds me,” 
said he, u of my youth and its companions. J have before 
my memory the day when our Hungarians marched out of 
Vienna in the presence of Joseph the Second with my 
noble friend Cantacuzene at their head. Go, my child,” 
he exclaimed, stirred by the name. “ You must leave me 
here. Go and and save the boyar.” Hebe could an¬ 
swer only bv pressing Ids hand.. u I may recover yet: life 
is strong within me; but, at my lime of life, recovery is 
slow. 1 should be but an incumbrance to your journey for 
a while. But 1 shall follow you, and vve shall yet smile at 
scenes like this, and among our hills escape, the world.” 

Hebe declared the utter impossibility of leaving him in 
the hands of strangers He persisted ; and at length to 
compromise the difficulty, she offered to try whether the 
angry ambassadress would not consent to take at least him 
in her train. 

As she proceeded on her reluctant message, she was 
surprised to observe the general silence that had succeeded 
the tumult of the apartments. A few steps further ac¬ 
quainted her with the cause. The ambassadress was 
gone ; and had left the young diplomatist to lay up with 
the other lessons of the art the caprices of offended beauty. 
Comedy and tragedy, conversazione and lion-catching, 
had vanished in the impulse of the hour. The walls were 


HEBE. 


225 


stripped of their tapestry; the Venuses and Mercuries 
had flown from their pedestals; the marquis, the mollah, 
and the other phenomena, were left to waste their sweet¬ 
ness on the desert air. The ambassadress was already far 
away, with her mules, her monkey, her science, and her 
inextinguishable wrath against the unfortunate Hebe. 

In the deepest depression of heart, the deserted girl 
turned to the sick chamber, where she scarcely dared allude 
to her desertion, through fear of increasing the illness of 
her patient. But the decay of the sounds could not 
escape his ear : and the intelligence that Hebe was left de¬ 
pendent on herself, in the midst of a turbulent city of the 
enemies of her faith, oppressed him with an anxiety that 
produced its evident effects on his failing frame. 

Towards evening his strength sank still more visibly ; 
and panting and weak, he desired to be led to the casement 
to breathe the fresh air. An immense extent of country 
lay beneath the eye. The habits of the soldier’s life had 
not altogether effaced his original Italian spirit, and he re¬ 
marked, with lingering pleasure, the fine effects of the 
sunset, as its tinges successively ascended from the plain 
to the upland forests, and from the forests coloured the 
mountain chain. 

He found in it an emblem of human life. “ The 
peasant on those mountains,” said he, “ drinks a purer air, 
and sees a brighter sun-shine than the richest possessor ot' 
the plain. Difficulty is, after all, the surest pledge of the 
surest happiness ; and if I now regret to leave you, my 
child, it is with no fear that your trial will be beyond your 
strength, or that, like the colours on those rocks and 
heaths, your path will not yet be brighter and brighter, 
as you toil up the ascent of life. Be comforted. It has 
been said that the last words of the dying are prophetic : 
then again I say to you, my innocent child, be comforted.” 

With those words he bent down, and parting the hair on 
her forehead, drew on it the sign of the cross, and pro¬ 
nounced a blessing on her. The sun threw his last gleam 
on the old man’s face in the action, and Hebe saw that 
it was stamped with death. 

She uttered a wild cry, and flew to bring him some wine 
that stood upon the table at the further end of the cham¬ 
ber, When she returned, he was dead: his hands still 


226 TIIE wallaciiian’s tale. 

clasped as in the benediction, and his eyes still fixed where 
lie had seen the sun descend. 

Life was totally gone, but it had gone placidly ; the 
countenance gave no sign of pain, and Hebe could not 
bring herself to believe that (he grand divorce of the 
spirit could have left the mortal tenement still so un¬ 
shaken ;—she watched and wept. 

in terror, yet in a sense of mingled reverence and duty, 
she sat beside the dead during the entire eight, contempla¬ 
ting, by her solitary lamp, the features in which her eager 
eye often cheated her with the symptoms of returning life. 
.But sunrise put an end to the pious illusion, and she felt 
that she had parted with her old guide for ever. 

To lay Iris remains in consecrated ground was her next 
care. She had been struck with the gentle countenance 
of the Greek monk, and she descended from the chamber 
in the vague hope of finding hirr\ among the crowd that 
were even at that early hour pouring into the open air. 


CHAPTER XX. 

The fortress, as it was called, though now dismantled, 
and chiefly used as a temporary dwelling for the Euro¬ 
pean envoys on their route to and from Constantinople, 
was of great size; and the various purposes to which 
every public building is successively applied under the rude 
government of the Porte, granary, prison, caravansera, and 
palace, had made so many devious additions to its original 
structure, that Hebe soon found hereelf utterly at a loss 
in the labyrinth. 

While she paused to recover her direction, she suddenly 
saw a rabble of Albanians stretched upon the pavement 
below among their mules and baggage. The morning 
was slowly rousing them ; and in the hope that she had 
escaped their eye, she sprang backward, and gazed round 
lrom the summit ol the stair, to discover some mode 
of escape safe from this perilous meeting, 

A pistol fired above, followed by a loud laugh at her 
excessive alarm, turned her eyes to a nearer peril. A huge 
figure, belted round with an armory of daggers and pis- 



iir.Bi?, 


227 


t^b, was leaning from the gallery over her head, hammer¬ 
ing his flint, and with every feature convulsed with bar¬ 
barian ridicule. 

“ So, young soldier,” said he, 44 you are tired of the 
wars already ; but you must learn to stand fire better, or 
you will disgrace the corps. Here—you have just come 
in time—help me off with my harness, and get my coffee 
ready. But, to whose troop do you belong ?” 

Hebe, in boundless embarrassment at this new per¬ 
plexity, disclaimed with all her eloquence her having any 
thing to do with the service. But the man of arms was 
deaf to persuasion, and swore by his father’s head to his 
having seen her among the ieoglans* within the month. 

4< However,” said he, 4k you have taken up a better 
trade than idling all day at the gates of that most stupid of 
barracks, and carrying love-letters of those rogues for sul¬ 
tanas, who, to save themselves a wrinkle, would see you 
hung up for every fowl of the air.” 

Hebe still protested, and strove to escape. 

The Albanian grasped her. 44 What! you hate the 
seraglio ? you scorn the pacha ? and you deny the service ? 
Excellent! So you may, if you like ; arid you may be 
right enough in them all. But, my good fellow, you must 
not do things of that kind to me, fir, slender as this arm 
of mine is,” and he bared his enormous limb to the shoul¬ 
der, 44 it may be thick enough to tie you to my horse’s 
tail, and make you march after your honourable master. 
But no more words. I am hungry. I have been travel¬ 
ling all night ; and unless you would have me devour 
you, go and get my breakfast ready.” 

He unrolled from a bundle beside him a small coffee 
equipage of exquisite finish, and embossed with coronets. 
44 You approve of those triffes,” said the Albanian, as he 
saw the involuntary glance from the cups' to their rough 
owner. 44 They are pretty things, and should encourage 
a beginner in our profession. Such accidents never fall 
in any one’s way but a soldier’s. If I had been sleeping 
in my bed last night, like the lazy shopkeepers of this 
great carcass of a city, I should not have fallen in with the 
two perfumed and lace covered gentlemen who were glad 
to make me a present of it for my trouble. How their 


* 


* Seraglio pages. 



223 


the wallaciiiak’s taie. 


illustrious master will look at his pair of valets, I neither 
know nor care. They were glad enough to get quit of me 
at any price. But Italians will be Italians all the world 
over; as I have found from the day when I first set out 
on my travels from the famous port of Durazzo, which 
may the saints long supply with salt fish, fresh miracles, 
and fatfriars?” 

The young captive had no power to remonstrate with a 
giant, a dozen pistols, and a scimitar that would have 
cloven down an ox. She kindled a fire upon the stone 
floor, made the coffee, and presented the result of her 
labours with an unconscious grace that caught even the 
spahi’seye. . 

“ I take you into my service,” said he, throwing one of 
liis belts with a dagger and brace of pistols over her 
shoulder. “ You will have nothing to do but to ride in 
the rear of the troop, to prepare my breakfast, dinner, 
and supper, to rub down my horse, clean my arms, mend 
my accoutrements, brush my boots, forage for my pro¬ 
visions, sit up at night when 1 am out on patrole, and 
whatever other trifling matters may be necessary. You 
see you will lead a life of idleness ; but I hate putting 
too much on young shoulders, and you shall have to your¬ 
self all the time that you are not employed about me ; and 
lucky are you that you are enlisted in the squadron of the 
renowned captain of the tenth regiment of spahis, Petro 
Androphono Polemo.” 

Hebe had no words for her acknowledgment of this 
sinecure life ; and the captain had begun to initiate her 
into its indulgencies, by an order to unroll his mattress for 
an hour’s rest after his night’s excursion ; when a trumpet 
sounded below, and the started up to answer the call. lie 
made a few angry steps, but turned back to give his part¬ 
ing wisdom. 

u Young fellow,” said he, “ look upon yourself as 
born under a bright star. You will be delighted with me. 
You might have fallen into the hands of some aga or pacha 
who would have harassed you to death. But I must 
leave you to your own company for a minute or two. 
May the black breath of Mahoun be upon the brute of 
a seraskier who will not allow a brave officer time to 




HEBE. 


229 

Stretch his limbs! Remember, I shall find you here at my 
return. I rely upon your honour.” 

With those words he unbuckled a saddle-girth, and fast 
ening it round her wrists, left her tied to the pillar of the 
stairs. 

But this dependence on her honour was not to be tried 
too long. The captain soon came back, and in too high 
indignation to do any thing but murmur curses on every 
body. He took up the package in which the coffee ser¬ 
vice had been stowed, and putting it into the hands of his 
new domestic, sullenly led the way through the galleries 
to a door, before which were drawn up a guard of jani 
zaries. 

The door opened, and Hebe, to her surprise, found 
herself in the formidable presence of his highness tl'ie 
seraskier, surrounded by a crowd of magnificently dressed 
officers and attendants ; but her surprise was still more ex¬ 
cited by seeing the Englishman of the conversazione seated 
near the Turk, and amusing himself with making alternate 
notes and caricatures of the scene. 

The captain had been summoned to account for an 
attack on a carriage containing the French and Italian 
valets of my lord, with a part of his plate. The luckless 
coffee cups had been seen by some of the troop ; and the 
seraskier, an old acquaintance of the marquis during his 
residence in Constantinople, was determined to exhibit a 
brilliant example of Mahometan justice in full court. 

When Hebe bad recovered her first consternation, she 
cast a look of wonder at this wielder of the might of the 
Ottomans. The Turkish generalissimo had been orb 
ginally a maker of turbans ; and a beggar he might have 
lived and died, had he not, from the covering of the head, 
fortunately turned his talents to the uncovering of the 
chin, and become a barber. 

His new trade too was a bad one ; for the Turks keep 
their beards and their resentments better than any people 
on earth ; and the barber might have perished on his 
profits from the chins of the Genoese and Sardinian 
sailors that haunt Galata :* but accident was his friend ; 

* A suburb'»f Constantinople* 

Vox. 1.— 20 


230 


THE WALLACHIAM’s TALE. 


t 


accident, that great and mysterious elevator of so many 
personages whose rise leaves the world in wonder ;—acci¬ 
dent, the sovereign patron of blockheads, threw a case of 
English razors in Ibrahim’s way. He made them his own 
by the law of possession, and cleared the few faces that 
came before him with a dexterity unparalleled since the 
days of Haroun Alraschid. 

In Constantinople, public events are not so numerous 
as to obscure the fame of a pair of English razors in the 
hands of * moslemin ; and the court is of course, of all 
spots in the capital, the most in want of news. Ibrahim 
was summoned to the foot of the king of earthly kings, 
and ordered to exhibit his performance on the beards of 
a group of the indignant bostangees, who, however, were 
thankful that the sultan had not commanded the operation 
upon their throats. His skill excited the grave admiration 
of the monarch. In Turkey, they wisely think that genius 
knows no restriction ; and that a man who does one 
thing well, only conceals his talents if he does not triumph 
in all. Thus the cobbler of to-day is the captain pacha* 
of to-morrow ; the sultan’s story-teller puts on the turban 
of the reis effendi,! carries on negotiations, still pretty 
much in the style of his old trade, and makes treaties that 
puzzle mankind ; and thus Ibrahim, from his talent in 
nourishing the razor, was felt to be the very man chosen 
by Providence to flash the sword ^blade in the eyes«of the 
Muscovite. 

He obeyed, as all men obey the Porte, with the con¬ 
sciousness that he might better run the chances of being 
bayoneted by the enemy, than the certainty of being 
Strangled by the sultan. But the experiment was not 
destined to be successful; and in the round plethoric 
figure and vacant visage before her, even Hebe’s unprac¬ 
tised judgment could pronounce that the best of barbers 
was spoiled to make the most disastrous of general- 
lissimos. 

But the case in court was too simple to perplex his in¬ 
tellects, even if he had been born a cardinal. The bold 
Albanian had left too strong a picture of himself fixed on 
the valets’ feelings, to be able, notwithstanding their rival 
flight and jargon, to disprovo the, meeting ; and the single 

* High admiral, t Secretary of state. 


HEBE. 


231 


resource for his honour and his neck was his u conceiving 
that they were contrabandists and his intention of “re¬ 
questing that the seraskier would make him the most for 
tunate of men” by accepting the trifles thus seized. 

“ Those,” said be, “ l have now brought before his 
highness ; and, since the seizure has been a matter of mis, 
take, here they are for the right owner.” The coffee set 
were displayed on the floor. Their beauty was not over¬ 
looked by his highness ; and after long and minute in¬ 
spection of the workmanship, he ordered them to be re¬ 
stored to the noble marquis. But the Englishman had 
seen the countenance with which the order was given, and 
he positively declined receiving them. They were u such 
mere trifles, and which he could so easily replace on his 
return, that he only regretted their being too unimportant 
for his highness’s acceptance.” 

The strife of generosity was carried on for a while; 
but Ibrahim at last condescended to give way, and the 
plate was put into the hands of his master of the 
household. * 

Now was the crisis of the young Greek’s fate ; and her 
thoughts wandered from demanding the assistance of the 
Englishman, to throwing herself on the justice of the 
pacha. But she rapidly dismissed both expedients. The 
justice of the pacha would probably have been exchanged 
for some act of tyranny, where a Greek was concerned; 
and from the assistance of the Englishman she shrank. 
His glance had already shown that her dress could not 
disguise her ; and, under those circumstances, she felt 
that even the Albanian was the safest master. She buried 
her head among the crowd that blocked up the entrance 
to the hall, and felt herself relieved of no slight anxiety, 
when the captain, striding away sulkily from the seat of 
power, called out roughly to his menial to follow. 

The offence of depriving a plunderer of his prey was 
Hot the shape which the seraskier’s justice took in the 
Albanian’s eyes. His soliloquies, as he sat at the meal 
prepared by the delicate fingers of his slave, disclosed the 
feeling that it was himself who had been robbed. “ The 
pacha’s villainy had mulcted him of his pay.” His occa¬ 
sional gatherings on the road being the only pay which he 
ever expected to receive, his wrath was so irreconcilable. 


THE WALLACHIAK ? S TALE. 


T32 

that Hebe, though full of sorrow for the neglect in whici'i 
she was compelled to leave her only friend to the chances 
of sepulture, dared not interrupt his meditations. 

Once she mentioned this act of duty ; but Petro Polemo 
was utterly incredulous, and told her that u all deserters 
must be shot.” .She had no time for entreaty. A despatch 
from the frontiers hurried the army forward ; the whole 
body of the cavalry were ordered to proceed instantly: 
and the. seraskier, angrily roused from his after-dinner’s 
sleep, led the march ; in which Hebe, on horseback, in the 
midst of a horde of warlike banditti, 'followed her master. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

At sun-rise the spires of Adrianople were low in the 
eastern horizon ; and Hebe saw, with silent grief, that 
every step led her further from the object to which she had 
devoted her life. Before her lay the immense plain or suc¬ 
cession of plains, crested by the Balkan, that ancient ridge 
of Mount liaemus which has so long served as the barrier 
of the Porte against European invasion. 

If she could have a thought but for the ruin which might 
be at that hour encircling her father, she might have 
grieved over the desolation of this once famous land. The 
wreck (if cities, the wreck of the human race, the vagrant 
soldier, and the wolvish robber, were the only evidences 
that those luxuriant plains and rushing rivers and magnifi¬ 
cent hiiis had ever witnessed the face of man. 

From the banks of the Maritza, that Ilebrus, of which 
poetry has recorded so many lovely legends, the cavalry 
traversed, a desert, yet covered with the most delicious and 
various vegetation, from the green leaf of the oak to the 
bloom of the opening rose. The crocus, the anemone, 
and the wild tulip, inlaid the fields with the colours of a 
iloor of mosaic ; and the innumerable birds of every song 
and hue, that rose before the sun, gave animation to the 
broad and solemn beauty of the landscape. 

At the close of the second day, the cavalry had reached 
the foot of the Hamms, the Balkan swelling with its long 




HEBE. 


233 


fange of cones against the northern sky. The singularly 
broken and rocky face of the ascent appalled the troops. 
The day had been intensely hot; the march had been long; 
and the cavalry, totally wearied, began to demand orders 
to rest for the night. But Ibrahim dared not delay. After 
a half hour’s halt, the trumpet sounded : the spahis, furi. 
ously angry, yet obeyed; and the whole ten thousand 
cavalry were forced up the acclivities of the mountain. 

During the earlier part of the day, the Albanian had rode 
on sulkily at the head of his troops, which were stationed 
near the centre of the immense column. But on hearing 
the order for the night movement, Hebe, whose eyes were 
quickened by her eagerness to take advantage of the first 
opportunity of escape, observed his countenance throw oil 
its clouds; he resumed his natural rough good humour, 
talked loud, and descanted on the u glory and the gold that 
the regiment were sure to gain before the monthwas over.” 

Night fell; and as the crowding of such a multitude 
through the broken roads of the Balkan produced increas¬ 
ing confusion, the Albanian’s troop, apparently with the 
object of avoiding the pressure of a large body of Kara- 
manian horse, following them in charge of the pacha’s 
baggage ; halted on a height until they passed by, and then 
fell leisurely into the rear. 

Towards the summit of the range the defiles, always 
narrow, grow yet narrower, and more obstructed by the 
rocks that every winter loosens in vast masses from the 
heights. The Turks leave every thing to nature ; and in 
those entangled roads the confusion of the jaded cavalry 
of course rapidly increased. The night was at once in¬ 
tensely hot and heavy with storm ; and the thunder rolk 
ing on the crown of the hills soon rendered it impossible 
to hear the signals for the different corps. Torches were 
lighted in vain ; the gusts of wind either dashed them out 
or tossed their flame in the eyes of the guides. The 
screaming of horns, trumpets, and commands in various 
tongues, only swelled the disorder. Every step now made 
the march more a scene of confusion. The thunder bel¬ 
lowed heavier above. The shouts, curses, and trampling 
of the troops, made a more tremendous din below : the 
corps were mixed together ; the baggage-mules broke 

20 * 


T 1 IE WALLACHIAIi’s TALE. 


234 

down, and choked up the way. And all was done under 
a night of pitchy darkness. 

At once, in a pause of the gale, a sound was heard, 
that instantly checked every voice of man. A low peal 
that seemed to come from the bosom of the hills echoed 
round the horizon. It increased : it was not thunder, nor 
like the discharge of artillery, but a deep and hollow roar, 
at which the stoutest heart felt itself appalled ; and many 
exclaimed that the ground was shaking under them, and 
threw themselves off* their horses to escape the earthquake. 

But doubt was soon at an end. Even in the darkness 
of the hour, a broad white streak was seen to play on the 
distant summit of the mountain range. It quivered and 
glimmered for a while. Then followed a roar, and a rush 
of .waters. A cloud had burst on the hills, and tilled all 
their channels. Innumerable cataracts came foaming, 
bursting, and thundering down. The roads were chieffy 
the dry beds of tiiose torrents : and they were instantly in¬ 
undated. Flight and struggle were equally useless. Horse 
and man were tossed and whirled away like the foam on 
the surface of the ocean. The devastation of the waters 
was made still more ruinous by the vast fragments of rock 
and timber that rolled down the torrents. The forests on 
the mountain sides were rooted up ; and the patriarchs of 
the woods, gigantic oaks and pines, that had stood lor cen¬ 
turies, came sweeping down tho precipices, and crushing* 
every thing in their way. 

In the midst of a tumult that was enough to overpower 
the sternest fortitude of man, Hebe, clinging in terror to 
the neck of her plunging horse, felt its rein suddenly caught 
and the animal dragged up a height at the side of the road. 
A flash, that tore the darkness asunder, showed her the 
Albanian, tugging at the bridle, and pointing to a broad 
rock on which a few of the cavalry were gathered. His 
sagacity had foreseen the storm, and by falling into the 
rear he had at once escaped the overwhelming rush of the 
broken troops, and allowed of his seizing the only height 
unreached by the waters. But he had from the beginning 
another object in view, which no casualty of nature could 
efface—the double purpose of rapine and revenge. 

The cloud, which had hitherto concentrated itself on 
the crown of the hills, discharging its freight of waters as 


HEBE. 


235 


if the fountains of heaven were opened, now began to 
expand over the whole mountainous region, pouring out 
incessant sheets of lightning. Ilebewlooked round with an 
eye of unspeak able awe at the powers of angry nature. 
As far as the gaze could reach, the white columns of the 
cataracts were seen tearing away the face of the hills, and 
encumbered with the wrecks of the army. Wagons, mules, 
camels, and the bodies of men and horses, were rolling 
down the sudden rivers at her feet. On the various pro¬ 
jecting points of the hrlls, little groupes of dismantled and 
hardly-escaped beings were seen clustering together. 
From time to time a burst of waters dividing from its old 
overladen channel, made a new course for itself; and 
dashing on those trembling groupes, hurled them down 
the precipices. A general slinek, and the tossing of hands 
and turbans along the ridges of the foam, were all that 
told of this fearful addition to the ruin : in the next mo¬ 
ment, even those were over. The thunder above, and the 
cataract below, were all the sound. 

After a night of havoc, the peals passed decaying up 
the heaven ; and the lightnings began to grow pale. The 
Albanian, who had for some hours sat with his troop on 
the ground, clinging to the rocks and stunted trees against 
the gusts that none could have resisted upright, now sprang 
on his horse ; and ordering his men to mount, and be in 
readiness to move on his return, galloped down the broken 
road alone. 

He soon came back, and the troop followed him up to 
their horses’ necks in water, to where, in the channel of a 
subsiding torrent, lay a heap of wagons, with the few 
remaining cavalry of their escort gathering hopelessly 
about them. 

The captain’s orders to attack the escort, to pillage the 
wagons, and to fly with the spoil, were not more rapidly 
<riven than obeyed. The pacha’s body-guard thought that; 
an exhibition of their valour, where their master was not 
present to do them credit, was useless; and they were 
only too happy to be suffered to join the exploit, and ride 
off with their share of the spoil. The wagons were im¬ 
mediately battered to pieces ; and the invaluable cargo of 
silk, spices, and jewelled boxes, that the seraskier had 
taken with him on the private account of the protecting 


236 


THE WALLACHIAls’s TALE. 


sultana to smuggle into the hands of the Frank Jews, was 
confiscated on the spot by the paramount authority of the 
scimitars • 

But the captain, in the midst of treasure and triumph, 
was still dissatisfied. With the rein of Hebe’s horse on 
his arm, he darted from wagon to wagon; and as each 
showed its opulent contents, the young Greek saw with 
surprise his impatience for its thorough emptying, and his 
discontent when his last hoards met its exploring eye. 

Disappointment had already ris'en into wrath ; and if 
the pacha could have been visited by ill fortune down to 
his grave by the prayers of a captain of horse, never would 
pacha have been more unlucky. But a sudden pull of 
Hebe’s charger upon his arm restored his temper. The 
animal stood snuffing and staring at some impediment, 
which continued to offend him : the waters were heaving 
against his knees the carcass of a mule. The captain 
gave it a blow of his pike. The clang of metal re¬ 
sounded : he dragged a package from its floating back, 
and opening it, with a cry of exultation displayed his 
prize. It was the memorable coflee-sei vice. 

He pulled out a few papers and trifles more, and burst 
into obstreperous mirth. 

44 So runs the world,” he exclaimed. 44 That over¬ 
grown thief, the seraskier, thought to rob me of my right, 
and stuff my property into his baggage. But I had sworn 
that, come what would, I should make him refund. The 
thing might be but a feather ; but the honour of a soldier 
was touched ; and feather as it was, I would have seen 
the holy standard turned into a carpet for an Austrian lap- 
dog, before any pacha under the moon should wear my 
feather in his turban. 

44 1 have watched for this chance, boy, ever since we 
left Adrianople. I would have watched for it until the 
end of the campaign, or of the war, or of the world. 
And I should have had it; or neither my pistol, carbine, 
nor scimitar, would have been worth the carrying. 1 saw 
the storrn coming on, and it has saved me some trouble, 
and perhaps some blood. But here is the true jest after all.” 

The troop had now gathered round him, and were in 
full sympathy alike with his laughter and his wrongs. 
44 The robber was himself double-robbed. The pacha 


HE HE. 


23 ^ 




thought that he had my prize safe ; but the pacha’s pipe- 
bearer decided otherwise, pilfered his plunder, and was 
pilfered in turn. This mule, which nothing but the mercy 
of St. Nicholas, the saint in heaven* who has never de¬ 
serted me or mine, could have thrown in my way, be¬ 
longed to the slave of the slave, the pipe-bearer of the 
pipe-bearer ; and here, my heroes, if any one of you has 
the grace to know his letters, you may read the whole 
history.” 

The harangue was received with loud applause. The 
captain flung the papers among his heroes, gave the 
service so precious to his honour into the especial charge 
of Hebe, and then ordered the whole to collect their pro¬ 
perty and move to the rear. Never was military opera¬ 
tion more unhesitatingly performed. The wagons were 
naked shells in an instant: the bales and boxes were piled 
upon the backs and slung by the flanks of the horses; and 
the whole troop glided down the miry and silent ravine, 
without noise enough to have disturbed a mole. 

To avoid alike pursuit and rencontres with the spahis 
which were daily advancing to the frontier, the troop di¬ 
rected their movement eastward, through the broken 
country that extends along the foot of the hills to the Black 
Sea ; and Hebe, in the midst of her alarms at the wild 
life into which she had been driven, yet cast many a gaze 
of wonder and admiration at the superb scenery of the 
Balkan. 

She had not yet seen the Alps, and could not contrast 
their abrupt and awful grandeur with the calm magnifi¬ 
cence of ihe landscape before her. The brilliant Alpine 
pinnacle, the glacier, and the wilderness of eternal snow, 
were not there. But she saw huge pillars of mountain, 
basaltic columns of a thousand feet high, disposed as if 
they had been reared by nature for some superhuman 
palace ; precipitous walls of marble, that it overwhelmed 
the eye to look upon ; and forests as old as the land, deep¬ 
ening over sunless ravines, and covering the space of pro¬ 
vinces with their shade. 

Under a clump of one of those forests, which seemed 
never to have been touched, but by the dews and airs, 
since creation, tho troop halted during the day. The 
pacha’s baggage had supplied more than merchandise; and 





288 the wallaouian’s tale. 

even the liquors hated by the law were found among the 
possessions of the generalissimo of the faithful. But the 
Albanian felt a higher zest in the libation to his honour made 
from the coffee urn ; and while his fierce soldiery were 
luxuriating in Tokay, he stretched himself on his leafy 
pillow, and enjoyed the grace of the young Greek in fill¬ 
ing cup after cup of the enchanted draught that makes 
even mollahs dream of paradise. 

At last the double delight of revenge and taste paused, 
and he turned to his young attendant. “ You are melan¬ 
choly, boy ; but why, my brains cannot imagine ; unless 
you have left some silly girl weaving roses and lilies for 
you, that you never expect to wear. But come, I am in 
a good humour now, and can bear a little of this foolery 
of crying for your love, or perhaps for your paramana.* 
Here is your share of the night’s work, and learn from 
this specimen the glorious life that lies before you.’’ 

He flung a purse full of sequins at her feet. She at¬ 
tempted to decline the present ; but the captain’s look 
showed that she could not be disinterested with impunity. 
She took it from the ground and fixed it in her girdle. 

u There,” said he, “ you begin to look like one of us ; 
the carbine over the shoulder, the pistol in the sash, the 
scimitar by the side, and the purse in the girdle, a man 
can go round the world and care for no one. Be encour¬ 
aged by my luck. I began life no better than you, though 
I was not fortunate enough to find so good a master. 

“ I flogged mules from Salonica to Patras twice a year 
for ten years of my first twenty. But 1 had too high a 
heart within me for my profession. Luckily, my old 
rogue of a Turkish master struck me one day. I knocked 
him down in return ; and with his purse, every piastre of 
which he owed me. his pistols, and both his ears, I walked 
off to join the captain Caltimachi on the top of the Pindus. 

“ After serving three years as a klepht,| I grew tired 
©f being starved, frost-nipped, and fired at; and de¬ 
manded my discharge. The captain said that I was too 
brave a fellow to be let go so easily ; and I soon gave him 
reason for wishing that he had laken me at my word. I 
predicted misfortune to him, and fulfilled it by setting his 


* None, 


t A mountain robber, 


\ 


HEBE. 


239 


house in a blaze over his head, and sending a blunderbuss 
full of bullets after him as he jumped out of the window. 

“ I now had fortune before me, and I followed it by 
taking service with the bey of Tripolitza. He was a 
brave old fellow and loved the brave ; and I there led a 
life of profit and pleasure. The bey loved wine, too, 
and in his cups uouid say and sign any thing. 1 made 
myself his prime minister on the strength of supplying his 
table ; and every bottle that I smuggled into his high¬ 
ness’s cellar was worth its weight in gold to me. J wrote 
orders on the peasantry, whieh they paid with a prompti¬ 
tude worthy of my reputation for bringing the refractory 
to a sense of their duty ; and in six months I was rich 
enough to offer the grand vizier the price of my master’s 
pachalic. 

“ But no man can be always fortunate. To secure me 
to his interest, the pacha had given me one of his wives. 
This marriage promised to fix me for life. But who can 
always read the stars ? It was my ruin. The handsome 
Fathme had felt herself degraded by quitting the harem 
of an old rogue, who had an establishment of forty wives e 
for the honours of matrimony with a young hero who had 
yet but four. 

<l Women are lovely superfluities ; and for superfluities 
one has always to pay dear. Fathme was an exquisite 
Creature, but as malicious as a serpent. She watched 
my movements, opened my letters, discovered my bargain, 
and made a hundred sequins by delivering me up to the 
bastinado. 

u On the very evening when I expected my trusty mes¬ 
senger from the Porte with the order for throwing the 
pacha into chains, I was visited by the pacha in person, corn- 
fronted with my messenger, who had betrayed me ; with 
tny wife, who disowned me; and with my own slaves,, 
who were ordered to strip, whip, and kick me out of Tri- 
j^olitza ; which three things they did to the letter. 

“ I wa9 now a man of the world again, and had my 
Choice of turning Jew, Moslemin, or whatever I chose. 
Of all professions I was equally free, and might have made 
tny bread like others. But I had a little honesty, and a little 
humanity left, and was thus disqualified for success in the 
learned professions. But while I was thinking of the still 






240 


THE WAlLAt'DIAS's TALE. 

**■ f t 

nearer probability of being starved within the next twenty •’ 
four hours, 1 was roused from my lair among the tombs oi 
Tripolitza by the sight of a veiled woman. It was my wife. 
Many a man has been startled by such a sight before*, 
But I was angry as well as startled. Her voice stopped 
my hand. She told me, that though in her indignation 
she had given me up to the pacha, she had repented of it 
as soon as the mischief was done. She had seen my 
ruin with the composure of justice ; but the elegance of 
my figure, as I stood tied up to be flogged, compared with 
the crooked old pacha’s, had changed her mind at the in¬ 
stant. She waited only for night to make her escape to 
the man of her heart; and in proof of the sincerity of 
her affections, she had plundered the decrepit tyrant ©! 
every valuable that she could lay her hands on. 

“ My anger died away at the sight of her night’s work. 
She had made capital use of her time, and came loaded 
with pearl, amulets, topaz rings, and a bag of gold. To 
reward her taste, I took her to the hills, lived with her 
for a year of dutiful wedlock, and might have lived with 
her longer had she brought me any thing but a daughter. 
But I thought by this time that one woman was enough 
in a house; so I sold my sultana to the best bidder, and 
sent her on her travels to Africa. 

u But now, boy, listen to the object of my story. You 
are a showy young fellow, too slight, however, for this gal¬ 
loping life of ours ; and, having had the ill-luck of a learned 
education, you will probably never have a taste for better 
things. My daughter is the beauty of the mountain?. 
You shall have her, with as many goats, mules and se¬ 
quins, as sixteen years of a life spent in the skirts of every 
camp, where there was any thing good to be got, could 
gather for her dowry. She might have captains by the 
score. But I want no son-in-law that will cut my throat 
for living too long. You would rather, l dare swear, cut 
melons or cabbages. In one word, I have taken a liking 
to you ; and all that you have now to do is, to think of 
my offer while i fail asleep.” 




END OF VOL. I. 



•*? i'» 


\ 


















s' 


0 * s. 


+ A 


A 


*«,'% A ‘“’' c 

* A 

■< ■/-• O 


% 2* 
<** y 


o » y 


A ^ 




*3 /y / s'* \t> 

' 7 s+ 1 tt <r ^ N* ■ i a * 

k O .(V « v * ^ 

V .J> A A *<X2~ 1 '*' i 

L ^ i A££^ * v* 

OO^ » 



^ A , ^ 

' A ^ y <y ^V ^0 

s V v * * , y > 

f C* V s ' 7 *f ^ j,v 

* *f» ^ - a? r 

r ' <* \V * ^ C* Or 

O ,.\V p i=Mi IbsS y ->^ Cp» 





% "'AA "' ■(? 

'•A ** ( o* ,“"■* 

XV.V ^ ° ^ - 



* % 

» -a ^ y 

<■ y o * x * _ 2,. /y / 

*Ctf> *«&' 

^ * <* * c5^s - y * 

■jr _a\ v. 

A, <? 



* <, S 



* c -' 'jjy^~ x- c 

... \ v;,-' / 4 .. 

4'2'_« a ''. % v Vj«£J* 


A '"* l 'V A 


1 ’-TO 

c*- y /^SpJP s a v * fcf &> 

D o G° .^1 ^ ^ 



O X° °X* 


;v>”•■•■ y. >-;•■■•■. y?. •.. 

'* ' \Va; V av * £&*'• * ^ - r ^' 




A ' " ' A t A ,**' :° ' ■•«,'<?, 

. ^ #■. ;' ^> * ^ a\ x y 

*>» \ ^ f* ' /x ^ '^ : ' / sa ^ 1 <k y <x V 


*' \# : ’ ^ # » ,T» ** °° 

,<, * • a A •*? 





°/. ».,«•' / 4 .., 

' «*. v v »* ' 

^ \\* <t 




■fe V ^ 

N y ^ * 

S S ^ , g <y y 0 » y * 

’< O C\ * v « <£ 

y & C> V v srTT-. 1 'p \ 

\Yi*V y x Jt ■? a' A \ 

y ■<_ _v i 1 -1>'y A . 'r'/ 

« o o * ^ > 















s ' 


% s 

'/ ■ 1 » * s s 
^ °o e 







V * -\ 


/ 




J> r'»A "C 

*. y ->v ,*« *<? „ 

#' % : .KJ a 7 







•* 











^ „-n„—. *•''■*» 

S * * , <«*. * 3 N 0 ' A 0 ’ ^ 

, ■*. C V 

'<* ® r\X\\ 


t*° U, C /\ ’O, */7*. v * ,0 

0° ^ S'l 9 * *€>/“' J 

^ V 

LI 2 ■ ** 

p°«. 

^/'"- \*\o ' c. <& '■% 



xV </> 


W 


o5 ^ 






0 N 0 


^ O 



+ 

-/> * 8 

UP* * 0 V 
n \v 


\> S 




4 v, » ^ 





- 4 T .. . 

+ * * ,v 

' ^ ON ,. % A 0 ' , , , <, *'»•'- A 

y ♦>■ ;<■, °o $ y ::y ** ,** 

< J / '%. . .. r. * J&OTfeaL, ? ^ 





o 0 




>• V 


x v ^ ^ 

* o> ^ ' 

Q- jt&'-. ^ ’ a &h . 

'-^V *\X^ 

</ \V 







V"* S o 


•*V,* l, ’«*V'*‘V 

, c fMfag? % vi* 

r£- y '*\JnT-' o i ) , , 

.. , 

*• 



# v V - 

d- y ^B$*r ' <1 

JT^V ^ O 3 C> v S 

^ V iT^U x 

°* ■ "; , oo' .- 

oS TV 

s' X x <1 <*. y 




A -> - , * o °^ ‘ ' »'»'■■'* N \^ 

% ^ ^ 4 V a V ,v * 
^ c ' - ;' •, ° z ^ ^ 

> ,r> 1 ’ 1" • _ •” 


& 


at v 

































































